442 THE SEDGE FAMILY. 



often very distinctly apart, the male flowers collected in a large, ter- 

 minal and erect catkin, the abundant yellow anthers of which render 

 it strikingly handsome, while the females are in several other catkins, 

 on the upper and middle part of the plant, and often remarkable for 

 their length, beautiful cylindrical form, pretty green or brownish hue, 

 and elegantly pendulous position. They mostly blossom in spring and 

 early summer, about the same time as the grasses. 



The Cyperaceffi are distributed freely all over the world, growing in 

 every habitat in which it is possible for flowering plants to live, from 

 the hottest and driest to the coldest and marshiest. Woods, rivers, 

 ponds, swamps, moors, mountains, the dry, drifting sandbanks on the 

 sea-shore, are occupied more or less abundantly by their representa- 

 tives, the total number of species being estimated at two thousand. 

 Broadly speaking, they are plants of little direct utility. The hard 

 and juiceless herbage, destitute of saccharine principles, prevents their 

 being eaten as fodder or pasturage ; the only purpose they seem to 

 serve is the binding together soil otherwise loose and impassable, and 

 thus preparing the way for the implements of the agriculturist. The 

 neighbourhood of Manchester, from its generally low-lying level, and 

 wet character, and the numerous mosses and moors, ponds or " pits," 

 damp doughs and swampy hollows, with no outlet for their waters, 

 which are found in almost every direction, and which are favourite 

 residences with a large proportion of the British species, — is rich in 

 Cyperacese. Out of about eighty native species, we have in our Flora 

 no less than forty-nine. A large portion are pretty and interesting 

 plants, but they are a difficult tribe to study. It is necessary to watch 

 most through their entire progress from the period of blooming to that 

 of the ripening of the fruit, and many species can only be told with 

 certainty when the latter is perfect. The " cotton grasses," or " silver- 

 tassels," which so charmingly adorn our moorlands in early summer 

 with vegetable snow, are while in bloom quite insignificant. Orna- 

 mental plants, fit for the garden, this family can hardly be said to 

 supj)ly. One or two foreign species of Cyperus, the little green-tufted 

 Isolepis repens, and the celebrated Papyrus of the Nile, all of them in- 

 mates of the conservatory, comprise perhaps the whole. The Papyrus 

 is a magnificent plant, throwing up numerous roiuid green stems, five or 

 six feet high, and the thickness of one's finger, and crowned with large 

 compound umbels of gi-een flowers, the innumerable primary rays 

 twelve or fourteen inches long, and as fine as hair, so that the umbels 

 form beautiful half- pendent spheres of a foot or more in diameter. 



