216 THE STORY OF PLANT LIFE 
especially in marshy tracts. They equal the grasses 
in Lapland, but as the equator is approached they 
decrease, and give place to Cyperus, etc. 
The papyrus used for paper, boats, ropes, does not 
grow in the Nile now, but in Nubia locally. A sort 
of papyrus is made into matting in India, and a rope 
is made of Cyperus textile. 
One distinction between a grass and a sedge is in 
the sheath, which is not split as in grasses, but 
entire. 
In the Bullrush group the spikelets have no ter- 
minal flowers and are always bisexual and herma- 
phrodite, including Cyperus, Cotton Grass, Bullrush, 
Eleocharis, Fimbristylis (the last tropical). In the 
Sedge group the spikelets are unisexual or the flowers 
may be hermaphrodite and may be moncecious. 
The male and female flowers are on axes of different 
orders. They include Schcenus, Rhynchospora, 
Carex. , 
They have the grass habit with solid, angular 
stems, and often creeping rhizomes (the sand sedge by 
this means helping to bind the dunes together on 
the coast). 
They are mainly perennial. The new shoot of 
each year is adnate to the parent stem. The aérial 
shoot is grass-like, the stem solid, with three ranks 
of leaves, and corms or tubers. 
The leaves are narrow, tapering, wrapped round 
the stem in a complete sheath. 
The flower is a spike or panicle or cyme, each unit 
