Tripogon liouae S. M. Phillips & S. L. Chen

Tripogon liouae has a distinctive habit, with a basal tuft of short leaves and dense, blackish racemes on culms that are conspicuously taller than the basal tuft.

Culms 10–30 cm tall. Basal leaf sheaths finally splitting into dense clumps of fibers; leaf blades 1.5–6 × ca. 0.1 cm, much shorter than the culms, adaxial surface pilose with long scattered hairs, abaxial surface glabrous. Racemes 2–8 cm, slightly flexuose, very dense, spikelets diverging from rachis, imbricate by 1/2 their length or more. Spikelets 6–15 mm, blackish; florets 7–15, loosely imbricate, rachilla visible; lower glume lanceolate, asymmetrical, broadened on one side below middle, sometimes lobed, subacute and mucronate; upper glume narrowly lanceolate-oblong, 2.7–4 mm, apex emarginate and mucronate; lemmas lanceolate-oblong, 2.2–2.6 mm to sinus, 2-dentate, central awn a little shorter or about equaling its lemma, 1.8–2.8 mm, teeth acute to truncate, lateral veins extended into 0–0.5 mm mucros; palea keels narrowly winged, ciliolate. Anther 1, 1.3–1.8 mm. Fl. and fr. Jul–Sep.

Xizang.

* Dry open spaces, sometimes forming a turf; 3000–4600 m.