Rhizome short. Stems tufted, slender, erect, triquetrous, smooth or sparsely scaberulous just below the inflorescence, 20-120 cm by 1-3 mm, surrounded below the leaves by a few ferrugineous to dark brown, bladeless sheaths split into fine, sometimes reticulate fibres. Leaves subbasal and occasionally 1-2 higher up the stem, shorter to much longer than the stems, stiff, with strongly revolute margins, gradually attenuated, 3-8 mm wide. Spikelets 4-6, rarely more, subapproximate or the lowest more distant, cylindric, 2-8(-10) cm, terminal wholly male or with a few female flowers, erect, 1.5-4.5 mm thick, remainder androgynous (male part short) or wholly female, 4-6 mm thick, lower usually nodding on slender, smooth or scabrid, long peduncles. Lower bracts foliaceous, much overtopping the inflorescence, upper ones much smaller, none sheathing, but dark brown auricled at the base. Glumes oblong, obtuse, truncate, or bilobed-emarginate, thinly membranous, ferrugineous to castaneous, or pale with reddish flecks, 1.25-3 mm long, with 3-nerved central stripe excurrent in a wide, scaberulous-margined awn ½-2 mm long. Utricles elliptic, obovate, or sub-orbicular, compressed-biconvex, membranous, nerveless, narrowly marginate, glabrous, densely beset with ferrugineous or reddish, raised glandular papillae, obliquely erect, shortly stipitate, 2¼-3(-3½) by 1.5-2.25 mm; beak extremely short, entire. Nut pyriform to suborbicular, compressed-biconvex, broadly stipitate and beaked, 1¾-2 by 174-1¾ mm. Style thickened at the base. Stigmas 2.
More
Rhizome short. Culms tufted, 20-75 cm tall, acutely trigonous, clothed at base with yellowish brown or dark yellow-brown sheaths disintegrating into reticulate fibers. Leaves subequaling culm, blades linear, 3-5 mm wide, flat, margins revolute. Lower involucral bracts leaflike, conspicuously surpassing inflorescence, sheathless, upper ones setaceous. Spikes 3-5, approximate; terminal spike male, rarely with a few female flowers at apex, narrowly cylindric, 45-65 × 1.5-2 mm, with peduncle; lateral spikes female, rarely a few male flowers at apex, long cylindric, 2.5-6.5 × 3-4 mm, densely many flowered, with slender, slightly scabrous peduncles, lowest one 2-3 cm, pendent. Female glumes pale, ferruginous flecked, oblong, ca. 2 mm (excluding awn), green 3-veined costa excurrent into a scabrous awn at truncate or emarginate apex. Utricles dark brown, longer than glume, broadly ovate or elliptic, biconvex, 2.5-3 × ca. 1.8 mm, densely papillose, nerveless except for 2 costas on edges, broadly convex, apex abruptly contracted into a short beak, orifice entire or emarginate. Nutlets brown, slightly loosely enveloped, suborbicular or broadly ovate, ca. 1.5 mm, densely papillose; style long, base not thickened; stigmas 2. Fl. and fr. Mar-May.
In open damp places, swampy grassland, 1500-2700 m.On Mt Dieng (Java) van Steenis (1972, l.c.) observed in the shallow crater marsh Telaga Pangonan that it formed in a stand of Scirpus mucronatus L. large, solid, hummocky tussocks, 75 cm high and 50 cm thick, similar as do C. pani-culata L. and the grass Molinia caerulea (L.) Moench. in Europe and C. secta Boott ('nigger-head') in New Zealand. This peculiar habit is obviously for a large part developing with a fluctuating water-level. — (Ed.).
Home
