254 



FIELD AND WOODLAND PLANTS 



perianth, but there are often a few very small scales or bristles at 

 their base. They have two or (generally) three stamens; a one- 

 celled ovary ; and a style that is more or less deeply cleft into two 



or three slender stigmas. The 

 fruit is a small, one-seeded nut, 

 usually flattened in the species 

 which have two stigmas, and 

 triangular where the stigmas are 

 three. 



The reader should make him- 

 self thoroughly acquainted with 

 the above features of the sedges, 

 in order to avoid any confusion 

 with the rushes, on the one hand, 

 and with the grasses on the other ; 

 and he must not be led astray by 

 the fact that some of the sedge 

 family are popularly known as 

 rushes. 



Of this order the pretty Cotton 

 Grasses {Eriophorum) often form a 

 very conspicuous feature of marshes 

 and other wet places. They are 

 tufted or creeping plants with ter- 

 minal spikelets, very much like 

 those of the other sedges, but their 

 flowers are perfect, and the bristles 

 which represent the perianth grow- 

 to a considerable length as the 

 flowering advances, protruding far 

 beyond the overlapping glumes, 

 and at last forming dense tufts of 

 fine cottony hairs. 



Two species are decidedly com- 

 mon and widely distributed, more 

 especially the Common Cotton 

 Grass {Eriophorum polystachyon), 

 which is often so abundant as to give a general whitish appearance 

 to whole patches of boggy land. It is a creeping plant, with solid, 

 rigid, solitary stems, from six inches to over a foot in height ; a 

 few shorter, radical leaves ; and a few leaves on the stem. Its 



The CoraoN Sedge. 



