Herb, dioecious, rhizomatous, perennial; males with similar fertile and vegetative culms; females with vegetative culms but spikelets subterranean. Rhizome to 40 cm long or more, 1–4 mm diam.; scales glossy dark brown to chestnut, lanceolate, usually shortly fimbriate. Culms dimorphic; vegetative culms much-branched, 10–50 cm high, to 2 mm diam. at base, c. 0.5 mm diam. towards apex, terete to compressed, striate, glabrous, green to yellow-green; internodes numerous, to c. 4 cm long; floriferous culms few on male plants, mostly unbranched below the inflorescence, erect, 30–50 cm long, 1.0–1.5 mm diam. at mid-culm, terete to compressed, striate, glabrous, with several internodes each to c. 10 cm long. Sheaths 1–2 cm long, appressed, light brown to straw-coloured; apex acute with a 1–2 mm long blunt lamina; sheaths on branches c. 2–5 mm long, appressed, green to light brown, glabrous, apex obtuse to acute with a blunt lamina c. 1 mm long. Male spikelets in a narrow inflorescence 20–35 cm long; terminal on filiform pedicels to 2 cm long, ovoid, c. 5 mm long, c. 3 mm wide. Male glumes c. 15–20, all fertile, ovate to rhomboid, concave, straw-coloured, glabrous, 1.7–2.7 mm long; apex acuminate; mucro 0.5–0.7 mm long. Female spikelets solitary, sessile on short subterranean branches, with only the long style, stigmas, and tips of cataphylls above ground; fruit maturing below ground. Male flowers: tepals 1.5–2.0 mm long, oblanceolate, thin, pale, hyaline; inner tepals mucronate; filaments 2.5–3.1 mm long; anthers c. 1.2 mm long. Female flowers enclosed by glossy, brown bracts; between bracts and tepals are dense, long (5–10 mm), coarse ginger-brown hairs; tepals hyaline, narrowly deltoid, acute; style emergent, basally connate with 3 stigmatic branches. Fruit globular, dark brown or black, 10–11 mm diam.
Home