Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennials with erect to ascending rhizomes clothed with brown to dark brown remains of basal sheaths.

Stems: Culms tufted, 25–40 cm tall, 3–6 mm in diameter in lower part, terete (cylindrical), usually 1–2–nodose between the base and the inflorescence.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Primarily basal, only 1–2 cauline. Blades linear, longer than the culm, 60–90 cm long, 6–13 mm wide. Apex acuminate. Blades coriaceous. Margins serrulate–scabrous, strongly involute. Sheaths dark brown, slightly glossy. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescence a very dense or open spike-like panicle, oblong–ovoid or oblong–ellipsoid, 7–30 cm long, 2.5–5 cm in diameter, contiguously bearing 5–7 partial panicles, leafy bracts much longer than the inflorescence, the longer ones up to 60 cm long, base sheathing, 2–5 cm long, peduncles solitary or in pairs, mostly enclosed in the bract sheath; spikelets obovoid–turbinate when fruiting, 8–10 mm long, ca. 6 mm in diameter, 1–flowered; glumes dark brown, 7–9, only the uppermost fertile, the lower 4–6 rigid, ovate, 8–9 mm long, ca. 4 mm wide, gradually narrowed to a short-awned apex, upper 3 glumes chartaceous, subtending the achene, ovate–elliptic, ca. 7 mm long, 4.5–5 mm wide, apex obtuse. Flowers bisexual (perfect) or staminate. Perianth usually of 2 small scales, 3–4 mm long. Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens 4–6, not exserted from the glumes; filaments flexuous or crisped; style ca. l0 mm long, the base subulate, persistent. Ovary superior.

Fruit: Achenes yellowish brown to brown; ellipsoid or ovoidellipsoid; 6–7 mm long; 3–4.5 mm wide; obtusely trigonous to subterete; bony. Seeds 1; seed coat thin; free from pericarp; embryo basal; endosperm abundant.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Occurring in mesic forest; usually on open ridges.

Elevation Range: 310–610 m.