Carex stenophylla

Subsp stenophylloides: Çol ayakotu

Rhizomes 1-1.5 mm thick; scales straw-coloured to brown,later fibrous; rootlets often pink; shoots in small, dense tufts or sometimes solitary. Stems 5-25 cm, leafy at base; basal sheaths pale to dark greyish-brown, firmly clasping underground part of stems, becoming fibrous. Leaves 0.5-2 mm broad, usually shorter than stems, canaliculate to strongly involute, long-attenuate, straight and ± erect or sometimes curved, rather stiff, greyish-green with paler adaxial side; margins scabrid. Spikes 6-12, usually many-flowered, in a dense head-like or ± conical inflorescence to 1.8 cm; bracts similar to glurnes but larger, sometimes mucronate, base clasping. Female glumes broadly ovate, c. as long as utricles, brown to reddish-brown, often broadly hyaline-margined, sometimes with scabrid keels. Utricles pale yellowish- to reddish-brown, paler at base, broadly ovate to ovate, 3.2-4.4 mm, ± plano-convex, strongly convex on back, ± stipitate to 0.5 mm, coriaceous, often distinctly many-veined, with 11-18 ± elevated veins on abaxial side; beak to 0.7 mm, ± scabrid, dark, bifid. Stigmas 3-5 mm, often persistent. Nut pale brown, to 1.9 mm. Forest steppe, open scrub, dry meadows, often in places wet in spring, sometimes in rather saline places, roadsides, 980-2800 m.

Caucasia, Iran, Afghanistan, Transcaspia, Turkestan, Kashmir, Mongolia. Ir.-Tur. element.