5. Carex baccans Nees in Wight, Contr. Bot. India. 122. 1834.
浆果薹草 jiang guo tai cao
Rhizome woody. Culms densely tufted, erect and robust, 80-150 × 0.5-0.6 cm, trigonous, glabrous, leafy below middle. Leaves longer than culms, flat, 8-12 mm wide, glabrous abaxially, scabrid adaxially; basal persistent leaf sheaths red-brown, reticulate. Involucral bracts leafy, longer than inflorescence, long sheathed. Panicle compound, 10-35 cm, 3-8-branched; inflorescence branches single, oblong, 5-6 × 3-4 cm; peduncles of inflorescence branches rigid, basal one 12-14 cm, upper ones gradually shorter, usually enclosed in sheaths; inflorescence axes bluntly triquetrous, subglabrous; bractlets glumelike, lanceolate, 3.5-4 mm, leathery, only basal one with short sheath, others sheathless, awned. Spikes numerous, bisexual and androgynous, arising from utriculiform cladoprophylls, cylindric, 3-6 cm; male part of spike tenuous, few flowered, 1/3-1/2 length of female part; female part with dense and numerous flowers; male glumes chestnut, broadly ovate, 2-2.5 mm, membranous, apex awned; female glumes purplish brown or chestnut, broadly ovate, 2-2.5 mm, papery, with 1 green midrib, margins hyaline, apex awned. Utricles red to purplish red at maturity, shining, obovate-globose or subglobose, inflated, 3.5-4.5 mm, subleathery, with many vertical veins, upper margins hairy, base shortly stipitate, apex shortly beaked, orifice minutely 2-toothed. Nutlet brown at maturity, elliptic, trigonous, 3-3.5 mm, base shortly stipitate, apex apiculate; style base not thickened; stigmas 3.
Margins of woods, riversides; 200-2700 m. Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, Hainan, Sichuan, Taiwan, Yunnan [Cambodia, India, Laos, Malaysia, Nepal, Thailand, Vietnam].