Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Stout perennials with corm-like, woody rhizomes clothed with purplish brown scales and their fibrous remnants.

Stems: culms 60–160 cm tall, 5–9 mm in diameter near base, trigonous, with shallowly channeled sides.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Leaves numerous. Blades linear, shorter than the culm, 8–18 mm wide. Margins entire. Sheathing; sheaths purplish brown. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences dense, compound, umbelliform, 6–9 cm long, 7–12 cm wide, rays 8–14, spreading, 2–9 cm long, bearing a secondary umbelliform inflorescence with 4–8 spikes, bracteoles lanceolate, as long as or slightly longer than the secondary inflorescence, spikes ovoid–ellipsoid, 2–3 cm long, 1–1.5 mm wide, subsessile or on a ray up to 6 mm long, hence the secondary inflorescences nearly capitate; involucral bracts 8–12, linear-lanceolate, divergent, much surpassing the inflorescence, 3–14 mm wide; spikelets numerous, 4–6–flowered, moderately densely disposed, spreading, lanceoloid, 8–10 mm long, 1.5–2 mm wide, rachilla winged; glumes pale brown, subcoriaceous, somewhat loosely imbricate, narrowly ovate to ovate–elliptic, 3.7–4 mm long, 1.8–2 mm wide, inconspicuously 5–7–nerved on each side of midnerve, the midnerve broad, prolonged into a straight mucro, margins broadly hyaline, apex subobtuse. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens 3. Ovary superior.

Fruit: Achenes brown; narrowly ellipsoid; trigonous; ca. 2 mm long; ca. 0.8 mm wide. Seeds 1; seed coat thin; free from pericarp; embryo basal; endosperm abundant.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: ca. 1,200 m.