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Perennials. Rhizomes very short. Culms tufted, 5-40 cm tall, slender, slightly compressed, smooth, striate, with leaves at base. Leaves shorter than culm; leaf blade 0.5-1 mm wide, glabrous, margins often involute and apical part ciliate. Involucral bracts absent or 1 or 2, linear, to 2.5 cm. Inflorescence a reduced anthela, with only 1 or 2(or 3) spikelets. Spikelets sessile or stipitate, broadly ovoid, ovoid, or oblong-ovoid, 5-12(-16) × 3-4 mm, many flowered. Glumes densely arranged, yellowish white with short brown lines, broadly ovate, membranous, abaxially with many veins but not keeled, apex rounded and not mucronate or sometimes midvein excurrent into a ca. 3 mm mucro. Stamens 3; anthers linear. Style long, compressed, basally inflated, apical half ciliate; stigmas 2. Nutlet yellowish white, globose-obovoid to subglobose, ca. 1.5 mm (including short stipe), biconvex, with hexagonal reticulation. Fl. Aug-Sep, fr. Oct-Nov.
Plants annual, cespitose, 10–35(–40) cm, glabrous; rhizomes absent. Leaves polystichous, mostly spreading to ascending; sheath margins entire; ligule present, complete; blades narrowly linear, to 1 mm wide, flat to shallowly involute, margins distantly scabrid, surface glabrous. Inflorescences: spikelets 1, terminal or 2–3 in simple anthela longer than broad, laterals subsessile; scapes narrowly linear, coarsely ribbed, distally compressed; involucral bracts usually 1 per spikelet, exceeding or exceeded by it. Spikelets yellowish, mostly turgidly ovoid, 5–8 mm; fertile scales broadly ovate, 2–3 mm, apex obtuse, entire, midrib excurrent or not. Flowers: stamens 3, styles 2-fid, flattened, fimbriate. Achenes near white to pale brown, lenticular-obovoid to obpyriform, 2 mm, appearing smooth under 10–20X magnification, under higher power finely longitudinally ribbed, with fine, isodiametric pits in vertical lines. 2n = 10.
Solitary, or rarely paired, spikelets
Narrow-leaved annual or perennial
