Carex plectobasis is a tussock-forming species of perennial sedge in the family Cyperaceae.
Taxonomy and Naming
The species was described by the Russian botanist V. I. Kreczetowicz in 1946, published in Botanicheskie Materialy Gerbariya Botanicheskogo Instituta Komarova Akademii Nauk S.S.S.R. (vol. 9: 192). In Chinese, it is known as 硬毛薹草 (ying mao tai cao). A previous synonym is Carex hirtella Drejer (1844), a name that is not to be confused with Carex hirtella (Swartz) J. F. Gmelin (1791).
Description
The plant has a woody, oblique rhizome. Culms are tufted, 20–65 cm tall, slender, and obtusely trigonous (three-angled), clothed at the base with red-brown to dark brown sheaths that eventually disintegrate into parallel fibers. Leaves are shorter than the culm, involute (rolled inward), slightly rigid, gray-green, with scabrous margins and an acuminate apex.
The inflorescence consists of 4–6 spikes. The upper 3–4 spikes are male, approximate, linear-cylindric, 0.8–2 cm long, and sessile. The remaining lower spikes are female, remote, oblong-cylindric, 1–3 cm long, borne on slender, slightly scabrous peduncles. Involucral bracts are setaceous (bristle-like), shorter than the inflorescence, and shortly sheathing.
Female glumes are castaneous (chestnut-brown), pale at the middle, broadly ovate to ovate-oblong, 4–4.5 mm, with broadly white hyaline margins. Utricles are yellow-green, brown above, longer than the glume, suberect, oblong-elliptic, compressed trigonous, 5–7 mm, membranous, with many veins, the base gradually narrowed to a stipe, margins hispidulous, and the apex abruptly contracted into a conic long beak with a white hyaline orifice. Nutlets are stramineous (straw-colored), oblong-obovate, trigonous, about 2.5 mm, with a stipe about 0.7 mm at the base; style erect and scabrous; stigmas 3.
Flowering and fruiting occur in July.
Distribution and Habitat
The species is native to eastern Afghanistan, through Kashmir and Nepal, to western China (western Sichuan, Xizang [Tibet], and Yunnan). It grows in sandy or rocky sunny slopes at elevations of 3,000–4,300 meters, in the subalpine to subarctic biome. It is a perennial or rhizomatous geophyte.
