Microstegium lanceolatum (Keng) S. M. Phillips & S. L. Chen

This species is known only from the type gathering. It was first described in Ischaemum, but is anomalous in that genus because of its slender, linear rachis internodes and pedicels, and grooved lower glume of the sessile spikelet.

Perennial, forming large tussocks. Culms stiff, up to 40 cm tall, branched below, many-noded, nodes glabrous. Leaf sheaths glabrous or pubescent at junction with blade; leaf blades lanceolate, tough, glaucous, 3–8 × 0.3–1 cm, uppermost much reduced, glabrous, base constricted, margins firm, closely scabrid, apex acute; ligule firm, 2–3 mm. Racemes 2–3, subdigitate, erect, slender, 3–6 cm, brownish or purplish; rachis internodes linear, ciliate along angles, shorter than spikelet. Sessile spikelet 5–6 mm; callus hairs ca. 1 mm; lower glume lanceolate-oblong, papery, 4–7-veined, flat across back but grooved between median veins, keels indistinctly winged and scaberulous near apex, apex subentire; upper glume 3-veined, acute; lower floret with well-developed lemma and palea, lemma margins pilose above middle; upper lemma oblong, ca. 4 mm, bifid to middle or slightly below, outer margins of lobes pilose; awn of upper lemma 0.8–1.2 cm. Pedicelled spikelet laterally compressed, resembling sessile or rudimentary, shortly awned or awnless.

Yunnan.

* Habitat unknown; 2800–3000 m.

Basionym: Ischaemum lanceolatum Keng, J. Wash. Acad. Sci. 21: 155. 1931.