延长薹草 yan chang tai cao

Rhizome short. Culms ca. 30 cm tall, slender, compressed, scabrous. Leaves shorter than culm, blades linear, 2-4 mm wide, flat, apex acuminate. Involucral bracts leaflike, shorter than inflorescence, sheathless. Spikes 5, disposed in fastigiate inflorescence; terminal spike male, narrowly cylindric, ca. 1.5 cm; lateral spikes usually female, but with several male flowers at apex, cylindric, 2-3 cm, erect, lower 2 slightly distant, densely many flowered, with short peduncles, upper 2 sessile. Female glumes dark brown or dark purple-blackish, oblong-ovate, with green midrib, margins narrowly white hyaline, apex rounded. Utricles longer than glume, oblong-fusiform, compressed, ca. 3.5 mm, densely minutely papillose, few and faintly veined, base attenuate, apex contracted into a short brown beak, orifice truncate. Stigmas 2. Fl. and fr. Jul.

● Moist grasslands; ca. 3600 m. NW Yunnan.