Carex baccans Nees

Rhizome short, stout, woody. Stems usually robust, loosely tufted, erect, triquetrous or trigonous, smooth, 60-150 cm by up to 5 mm, the base surrounded by reddish, bladeless sheaths splitting in front into reticulate fibres. Leaves all over the stem, often overtopping the inflorescence, long-attenuate, coriaceous, flat or with revolute margins, asperous on the upper surface in the apical part, with scabrous margins, 5-18 mm wide; sheaths long, often splitting up in front. Inflorescence paniculate, compound or decompound, oblong, occupying 1/3-1/2 of the stem, erect or somewhat nodding at the top; partial panicles 5-8, single at the nodes, much branched, upper approximate, lower distant on long-exserted, smooth or scabrid peduncles. Lower bracts usually much overtopping the inflorescence, foliaceous, long-sheathing, upper much reduced. Spikelets very numerous, androgynous, suberect to patent, 2.5-8 cm long; female part cylindrical, densely flowered, usually longer than the slenderer male part. Glumes ovate or oblong-ovate, acute to subobtuse, glabrous or hispidulous, strongly nerved, purplish or castaneous with whitish-hyaline margins, muticous or the midrib excurrent in a scabrid mucro, 2.5-3.5 nun long. Utricles inflated, obscurely trigonous, obovoid to subglobose, patent, subcoriaceous, strongly nerved, glabrous except for the hispidulous margins at the apex, shining, at first yellowish green, ultimately red and more or less succulent, 3.5-4.5 mm long, abruptly beaked; beak recurved, bidentate. Nut triquetrous, ellipsoid, with flattish or shallowly concave faces, dark brown, 2¾-3 mm long. Style-base not thickened. Stigmas 3.

In damp thickets, open places in forests, in the mossy forest on the higher mountains, sometimes in mountain savannahs, or as pioneer in the Sandsea and on fresh landslides, on volcanoes, talus; (600-)1000-3300 m.