212 THE STORY OF PLANT LIFE 
Black Bryony was also used for wounds or bruises, 
the roots being made into a plaster and applied to 
the injury. 
THE RusH GROUP. 
Rushes, like grasses and sedges, are associated in 
wide patches and give a character to the vegetation. 
They are also influential in rendering permanent 
marshy tracts liable to be flooded by preventing the 
soil of low-lying ground from being washed away, 
maritime forms serving the same purpose on the 
coast. 
There are about two hundred species of the order 
Juncacez, and seven genera which are found in cold 
and damp regions in the temperate and arctic zones. 
Formerly rushes played a part now taken by carpets 
in our houses, and they were dipped in tallow and 
used as candles. Mats were largely made of them, 
and the bottoms of chairs are frequently to-day made 
of rushes. 
In Juncus the whole plant is glabrous and the 
ovules are numerous, axile or parietal on placentz, 
whilst in Luzula the plant is pilose, the three ovules 
being basal. 
The Rush habit is characteristic, being similar to 
the grass habit, but more czspitose and strict as a 
whole. 
The plants are perennials with creeping rhizomes, 
the stem being a flowering stem, the leaves long, fili- 
form, or linear lanceolate, grass-like in Luzula, rod- 
OE a a ee ~ 
