Cyperus kyllingia ("Ohimekugu")

Japanese name: オオヒメクグ （大姫莎草）
Scientific name: Cyperus kyllingia

[Overview]
A perennial that prefers sunny, moist places.
The rhizome is long and creeping, and flowering stems rise upright from its nodes.
The leaves are usually shorter than the stem, flat and linear, about 0.3–0.5 cm wide, and soft in texture.
The flowering stems are 10–40 cm tall, triangular in cross section, and not swollen at the base.
At the tip of each flowering stem there is usually one white, spherical inflorescence 0.5–0.9 cm in diameter, made up of densely clustered stalkless spikelets.
The base of the inflorescence has 3–4 long leaf-like bracts.
Each spikelet consists of only one floret; it is white, flattened from the sides into an oblong shape, with the ridges facing the axis.
The stigma is 2-branched.
The spikelet has 4 scales, 2 large and 2 small.
The scales are pale to straw-colored with rusty brown markings, and the keel is winged.
The fruit ripens brown and falls from the base.

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