Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennials with horizontal, woody rhizomes.

Stems: Culms densely tufted along the rhizome, 60–90 cm tall, 2–3 cm wide, antrorsely scabrous on the sharp angles, the sides slightly concave, 2–3–leaved.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Blades cauline. Blades linear, 30–50 cm long, 3–8 mm wide. Apex narrowing and subacute. Surfaces glabrous. Margins entire. Sheaths broadly to very narrowly winged, the contra–ligule deltate–lanceolate, obtuse. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in panicles narrow, open, 2–3– nodose, bearing 3–5 partial panicles, the terminal partial panicle 2–6 cm long, lateral ones solitary or paired, much smaller than terminal one, peduncles enclosed or exserted; involucral bracts up to 15 cm long, the sheath winged; spikelets rusty brown, sessile, in groups of 2 to several, subtended by setaceous bracteoles. glumes 2-ranked, the 2 uppermost glumes bearing a pistillate flower, ovate to broadly ovate, ca. 2 mm long, acute; hypogynium cup–shaped, ca. 1 mm high, apex truncate or inconspicuously 3-lobed and margins ciliate. Flowers unisexual. Corolla (petals) absent. Ovary superior.

Fruit: Achenes dingy white; glossy; broadly ovoid; 2.5–3 mm long; 2–2.3 mm wide; smooth; obtuse. Seeds 1; seed coat thin; free from pericarp; embryo basal; endosperm abundant.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Low elevation wet sites.

Elevation Range: