Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Apparently perennials with short rhizomes.

Stems: culms densely tufted, slender, wiry, 9–17 cm tall, 0.3–0.8 mm in diameter.

Roots: Fibrous root system.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Leaves few. Blades slender, channeled, shorter than the culm, 0.5–1 mm wide. Apex acute. Surfaces glabrous. Margins incurved. Veins parallel. Sheathing; sheaths dull reddish yellow, eventually disintegrating into fibers. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences simple, open, rays 0.5–1 cm long, usually terminated by a single spikelet, or rarely by a pair of sessile spikelets; involucral bracts 1–2, setaceous, shorter than to slightly longer than the inflorescence; spikelets 1–5, ovoid–ellipsoid to cylindrical, terete (cylindrical), 5–9 mm long, 2–2.5 mm wide, apex acute; glumes pale brown, tinged with darker brown on both sides above the middle, thin, chartaceous, broadly ovate, 2.8–3 mm long, ca. 1.8 mm wide, margins broadly hyaline, the midnerve prolonged into a mucro; style strongly flattened, conspicuously fimbriate in upper part. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens 3. Ovary superior; stigmas 2.

Fruit: Achenes pale brown at maturity slightly glossy; obovoid or narrowly obovoid; lenticular; ca. 0.8 mm long; ca. 0.6 mm wide; minutely reticulate–puncticulate; apex obtuse; base short–stipitate. Seeds 1; seed coat thin; free from pericarp; embryo basal; endosperm abundant.

Ploidy:

Habitat: A pioneer plant on pahoehoe lava.

Elevation Range: 10–70 m.