Scleria mikawana Makino

Annual. Stems slender but firm, smooth or sometimes slightly scaberulous, 30-80(-120) cm by 2-3 mm. Leaves rather abruptly narrowed to the obtusish or acutish tip, glabrous, smooth or scaberulous on the margins and main nerves in the upper part, 2½-4(-7?) mm wide; sheaths narrow, not winged, smooth, glabrous or sparsely pubescent on the anterior side; contraligule membranous, short, semiorbicular, ciliate. Inflorescence narrow, elongate, consisting of a terminal panicle and 1-2 lateral, remote, spike-like ones, with few spikelets, the terminal panicle somewhat longer than the lateral ones, these single at the nodes, on scarcely exserted, smooth peduncles; primary bracts erect, longer than the panicle in their axil, upper and secondary ones subulate. Spikelets unisexual; ♂ spikelets distinctly peduncled (peduncles ½-1½ cm long the lowest often curved outwards, often reddish), lanceolate, pale or stramineous, 4-5 mm long; stamens 3; anthers linear, c. 1½ mm long; ♀ spikelets c. 5 mm long, the glumes oblong-ovate, acute or mucronulate, more or less reddish with green keel; often a sterile glume besides the ♀ flower. Disk thickish, deeply 3-lobed, yellowish or light green; lobes oblong, acute, sinuses obtuse. Nut globose or ovoid-globose, obscurely trigonous, minutely umbonulate, scro-biculate, 2-2¼ by c. 2 mm; lacunae rather deep, oblong to ovate, in longitudinal rows; walls between the lacunae broad, white, finally ferrugineous, forming a more or less continuous surface interrupted by the lacunae.

Savannahs, shores of lakes, by streams, in rain-forests, at low and medium altitudes, up to 1300 m.