Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennials with short rhizomes clothed with pale reddish brown scales.

Stems: culms loosely tufted, 45–90 cm tall, 3.5–4 mm in diameter, trigonous but with 1 side much narrower, scabrid.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Basal or nearly so and equitant. the upper leaves longer than the culm. Apex subacute. Blades grayish green, coriaceous. Margins entire. Veins parallel. Sheathing; sheaths reddish brown. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescence a compound panicle, oblong in outline, 15– 40 cm long, bearing 5–6 partial panicles, lower bracts longer than the inflorescence, the panicle branches 5–6 together, the longer ones up to 8 cm long; spikelets in clusters of 2–5, ovoid–turbinate in fruit, 3–5 mm long; glumes 3–6, rusty brown, the uppermost fertile narrowly ovate, ca. 4–5 mm long, keeled, margins chartaceous, ciliolate. spikelets with 1 flower. Flowers bisexual (perfect) or staminate. Calyx (sepals) absent. Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens 3. Ovary superior; style 3-cleft, base subulate, ca. 1 mm long, pubescent.

Fruit: Achenes amber brown; glossy; broadly ovoid to subglobose; 2–4 mm long; obscurely trigonous; subsessile. Seeds 1; seed coat thin; free from pericarp; embryo basal; endosperm abundant.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Occurring in mesic to wet forest.

Elevation Range: 150–1,220 m.