Japan Flora: Stems exten­sively creeping, leafy, mm. across excluding the leaves, al­ternately branched; branches forked, ascending, densely leafy, 6-8 mm. across inclusive of the leaves; leaves all alike, spread­ing, linear to broadly so, 4-5 mm. long, 0.5-1 mm. wide, more or less incurved and filiform at the tip, entire, green, slightly lustrous; spikes erect 1-6, cylindric, 2-6 cm. long; peduncles 7-20 cm. long, erect, loosely leafy, the leaves ascending or suberect, linear, with a long hairlike tip; bracts ovate-deltoid, with a hairlike tip, spreading, the margins narrowly scarious, undulate-erose. Woods in hills to high mountains.

Hok­kaido, Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu; common and very variable. Our plant, sometimes differentiated into 2 or 3 varieties, usu­ally has leaves with a shorter hairlike dp than European plants. The species occurs in Sakhalin, Kuriles, Korea, Formosa, China, India, Malaysia to Polynesia and Hawaii, N. America, Europe, and Africa.