CAREX STRICTA. 



TUSSOCK-SEDGE. 



NATURAL ORDER, CYPERACE^. 



Carex STraCTA, Lamarck.— Pistillate spikelets 2 to 4, cylindric, slender, the upper ones 

 sessile, often staminate at the summit; perigynia ovate, acute, about as long as the lance- 

 olate scale ; culms, one to two feet high, rather slender, deeply striate, very acute and 

 scabrous on the angles, leafy at the base, remarkably caespitose ; leaves linear, keeled, 

 often longer than the culm, radical ones very numerous; sheaths striate, sometimes 

 filamentous ; staminate spikelets, two or three, often solitary, half an inch to near two 

 inches in length; pistillate spikelets three quarters to one and a half inches long, the 

 lowest on a very short pedicel ; scales reddish brown, with a green keel, variable in length 

 and acuteness. (Darlington's Flora Cestrica. See also Gray's Manual, Wood's Class 

 Book, and Chapman's Flo>-a of the Southern States.) 



RASSES have mostly hollow and round stems; the 



^^ Sedges, which resemble grasses, have usually triangular 



solid ones, and while the former have generally hermaphrodite 

 flowers (flowers with stamens and pistils in the same individual), 

 the Sedges have the genders either in separate spikes, or in sepa- 

 rate flowers on the same spike. The origin of the name Carex 

 seems uncertain. It is supposed to be derived from the Greek, 

 and to signify " sharp," from the fact that many of the species have 

 such sharp edges to the leaves and culms as to cut the careless 

 handler. But although of Greek derivation, the name is first 

 found in Virgil as applying to this family of plants, and it was 

 adopted by modern botanists just as it stood. 



The Sedge Grasses constitute a family numbering hundreds 

 of species, and some of them are found all over the world. Few 

 of them have any beauty to the casual observer, but many of 

 them "will bear examination" remarkably well. The present 



