| General Information |
| Distribution | Widespread in tropical and subtropical areas worldwide.In the Hawaiian Islands,
indigenous to
Kaua`i, O`ahu, Moloka`i, Lana`i, Maui, Hawai`i.
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Habit
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Short-lived, perennial herb with short
rhizomes; culms tufted, trigonous, 10‒70
cm tall, 0.5‒1.5 mm in diameter.
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Leaves
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Leaves few per culm; blade green, glaucous, flat or margin weakly incurved, linear, shorter than the culm, glabrous or sparsely pilose, apex blunt; sheath glabrous or
pilose, ventrally reddish brown or pale brown; ligule a fringe of hairs.
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Flowers
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Inflorescences lax to dense, simple, compound, or decompound, 2‒10 cm long, 1‒5 cm wide, bearing numerous spikelets, rays 2‒5, 1‒6 cm long; involucral bracts 2‒5, proximal ones leafy, usually longer than the inflorescence. Spikelets solitary or in clusters of 2‒3, brown to somewhat reddish brown, ovoid to ovoid-ellipsoid, 4‒8 mm long, 2.5‒3 mm wide, acute; glumes yellow, tinged brown, thin, chartaceous, broadly ovate, 2‒3 mm long, weakly fewveined on both sides of the green keel, contracted to an often mucronulate apex; style 2‒2.5 mm long, strongly flattened, margin conspicuously fimbriate, dilated at
base, stigmas 2.
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Fruit
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Achenes yellow to white, broadly obovoid, biconvex, 0.8‒1.2 mm long, conspicuously cancellate with 5‒8
rows of transversely rectangular cells, apex rounded to apiculate, base short stipitate.
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Chromosomes
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2n = 10, 12, 20, 30.
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