Description

Key Characters:

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

Stems: culms loosely tufted, slender, trigonous, smooth, 20–50 cm tall, 1–2.5 mm in diameter, leafy at base.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. 2–4 per culm. Blades flat, linear, ¼–1⁄2 as long as the culm, 2–3 mm wide. Apex gradually narrowed and acuminate. Margins entire. Veins parallel. Sheathing; sheaths pale brown to purplish brown. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in corymbs simple or occasionally partially compound, lax, bearing 4–8 unequal slender rays 2–10 cm long; involucral bracts 3–4, the longest one more than twice as long as the corymb, each one bearing a head of spikelets; spikelets 3–8 per head, 6–30–flowered, pale green, digitate, linear–oblong, subobtuse, flattened, 4–12 mm long, 1–1.5 mm wide; glumes spreading, ovate, 1.2–1.5 mm long, margins hyaline, pale green, occasionally tinged yellow or reddish brown, apex acute, the keel green, 3–nerved, prolonged as a minute mucro. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Corolla (petals) absent. Ovary superior; styles short; stigmas 3.

Fruit: Achenes black; obovoid–ellipsoid to ellipsoid; trigonous; 0.9–1 mm long. Seeds 1; seed coat thin; free from pericarp; embryo basal; endosperm abundant.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Disturbed sites in wet forest.

Elevation Range: ca. 915 m.