Lipocarpha chinensis (Osbeck) J.Kern

Global description

Lipocarpha chinensis is a vivacious plant growing in tuft, 40-60 cm tall; culm more or less cylindrical, spikes of pale brown bracts, midrib marked brown. Wet grasslands, edges of swamps and rivers, gallery forests.

First leaf

Coleoptile glabrous not aristate. Glabrous sheath 1.8 to 3 mm long, trinerved. Leaf blade 7 to 10 mm long and 0.3 to 0.4 mm wide, trinerve.

General habit

Annual or vivacious plant, growing in tuft, 40-60 cm high.

Underground system

Fasciculate roots with some rhizomes.

Culm

Culm more or less cylindrical or triquetrous and 40-60 cm high and 1-1.5 mm thick.

Leaf

Basal leaves with tubular sheath. The blade usually measures half the length (allways shorter) of the culm, 10-40 cm long and 1-5 mm wide, plane, canaliculate or coiled, with edges and dorsal surface of the scabrid midrib, brownish sheath.

Inflorescence

Inflorescence terminal subtended by leafy involucral bracts (2-3) 2-5 cm long. Group of 5-12 spikes narrowly ovoid, conical or subglobular, obtuse at apex, 5 to 10 mm long and 4 to 5 mm wide, whitish or pale greenish.

Spikelet

Spikelet bract spatulate , oval or oblong, 1.5 to 2.7 mm long and 0.4 to 1.3 mm wide. Triangular apical portion of 1 to 2 mm, non-recurved, membranous, white or light yellow or greenish. Green central vein. Lanceolate glumes 1.2 to 2 mm long, 1 (2) stamens, trifid style.

Fruit

Grain 1 to 1.25 mm long, narrowly obovoid, obtuse trine, shortly apiculated, yellow, becoming light brown when ripe, with surface smooth to the eye but tuberculous.

https://www.gbif.org/species/2711798