BULRUSHES AND BULRUSHLIKE PLANTS 

 OF EASTERN NORTH AMERICA 



This is the second of a series of publications on the field ident- 

 ification of the marsh and water plants of eastern North America. It 

 describes 19 bulrushes and 4 bulrushlike plants. Current manuals 

 describe several other kinds of bulrushes that I consider to be only 

 variations of those treated here. The manuals also include the follow- 

 ing kinds that grow mainly in wet meadows, bogs, or swampy woods or in 

 dry places: Scirpus cespitosus, clintonii, divaricatus, fontinalis, 

 hudsonianus, koilolepis (carinatus), lineatus, longii, peckii, 

 polyphyllus, rollandii, sylvaticus (includes expansus and rubrotinctus) 

 and verecundus (see pages 266 to 276 in the eighth edition of Gray's 

 Manual). 



Bulrush seeds are important duck foods, and the rootstocks of some 



kinds are important goose and muskrat foods. In the north, diving 



ducks nest in stands of bulrushes that are broken by patches of water. 



In both the north and the south, such stands furnish house material 

 and cover for muskrats and shelter for ducks. 



Bulrushes are common in and along freshwater lakes, ponds, and 

 streams from Manitoba to Nova Scotia and south to Missouri and 

 Virginia, but are scarce farther north and south. Along the coast 

 they are common in and along fresh, brackish, and salt bays and 

 rivers from Nova Scotia to Texas. 



Bulrushes vary from a few inches high to twice as tall as a man. 

 Most of them grow in wet soil or shallow water and have stiff stems. 

 Exceptions are Water Bulrush, with most of the stem and all of the 

 hairlike leaves under water, and Alga Bulrush, with all of the limp 

 stem under water. In some coastal waters, Softstem Bulrush, Southern 

 Bulrush, and Common Threesquare are half-submerged at high tide. A 

 few kinds of bulrush come up from seed each year, but most have long- 

 lived rootstocks that perennially send up colonies of close-standing 

 stems. The stems of most kinds die in winter, but in the south those 

 of Southern Bulrush and Olney Threesquare often stay green. 



Most bulrushes start to head out by early summer. The heads 

 produce a tiny flower under each brown scale of their conelike 

 spikelets; and each flower ripens a single seed that varies from the 

 size of fine sand in Black Bulrush to 3/16 inch long in River Bulrush. 

 Spikerushes and cyperuses also ripen one seed under each scale. Rushes 

 (Juncus), however, produce small six-parted flowers, each of which 

 ripens a pod filled with many tiny seeds. 



