Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennials with short, woody rhizomes clothed with brown fibers.

Stems: culms solitary or few together, erect, 20–70 cm tall, trigonous, smooth, thickened at base.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Leaves several, basal. Blades linear, shorter than the culm, 5–7 mm wide, herbaceous, flat, plicate. Margins entire. Sheaths pale green, tinged purplish pink. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences umbelliform, simple open or sometimes nearly head-like, the rays 6–10, 0–5 cm long, the spikes green, terminal and solitary on each ray, cylindrical or oblong, narrowed at base, 1.5–3 cm long, 8–12 mm wide, densely bearing numerous spikelets; involucral bracts 4–10 the lower few longer than the inflorescence; spikelets bearing 4–7 glumes and 1–2(3) fertile flowers, spreading to ascending, linear-lanceolate, subterete, 4–6.5 mm long, ca. 1 mm in diameter, rachilla winged, jointed above the prophyll;-glumes green, glaucous, and eventually tinged yellowish brown, membranous to thin and chartaceous' appressed, elliptic to oblong–elliptic, 3–3.5 mm long, 1–1.2 mm wide, inrolled, 3–4–nerved on both sides of midnerve, the keel green, convex, apex obtuse or abruptly acute. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Corolla (petals) absent. Ovary superior; styles slightly more than 2 mm long.

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

Ploidy:

Habitat: Occurring in open; grassy sites.

Elevation Range: