芒尖鳞薹草 mang jian lin tai cao

Rhizome short, woody, rigid. Culms 60-150 cm tall, trigonous, smooth, rigid. Leaves surpassing culm, blades brown-green, broadly linear, 5-8 mm wide, flat, leathery, base plicate, revolute margins scabrous, apex acuminate. Involucral bracts setaceous, scabrous, sheathing. Spikes 3 or 4; terminal spike male, narrowly cylindric, 5-6 cm, with long peduncle; lateral spikes 2 or 3, androgynous, male part slightly shorter than female part, cylindric, 3-7 cm, densely flowered, lowest peduncle rather long, smooth, erect, upper ones rather short. Female glumes brown, oblong, 1-veined costa projecting beyond emarginate apex forming a scabrous substraight long awn. Utricles brown-olivaceous, longer than glume, rhomboid, 9-9.5 mm, subleathery, many veined, base cuneate, margins sparsely hispid, apex gradually attenuate into a subcylindric, scabrous long beak, orifice deeply 2-lobed with long teeth. Nutlets tightly enveloped, rhomboid, ca. 5 mm (including beak), trigonous with angles deeply constricted in middle, faces concave below, apex abruptly contracted into a cylindric beak ca. 2 mm, orifice slightly inflated; style base ± thickened; stigmas 3, rather long. Fr. Mar.

● Forests, swampy grasslands. Hong Kong.