304 GLUMACEiE 



Natural Order XCVI 

 CYPERACE.E. The Sedge Tribe 



Herbs, often resembling Rushes or Grasses, but they are usually 

 stiffer than the latter, with solid, often 3-angled stems, and lea\< 

 with closed sheaths, usually arranged in 3 rows ; /lowers in small 

 green-brown or sometimes blackish spikelets, which are either 

 solitary and terminal or several together in a terminal, simple, or 

 compound cluster, spike, umbel, or panicle ; each spikelet is placed 

 in the axil of a scale-like or leafy outer bract, and consists of several 

 scale-like, imbricate bracts [glumes), each containing in its axil a 

 solitary sessile flower ; perianth none or represented by a few 

 bristles or minute scales ; stamens 3 or rarely 2 ; ovary (in the 

 same or in a distinct glume) 1 -celled ; style more or less deeply 

 divided into 2 or 3 branches ; fruit a small seed-like nut, flattened 

 when the style is 2-branched, triangular when it is 3-branched ; 

 seed solitary. The Order is a very large one, including upwards 

 of 3300 species, which are widely distributed throughout the 

 world, but are more numerous in the north temperate regions ; 

 they usually grow in damp places, and many of the British species 

 are found intermixed with Grasses. The Cyperaceae contain very 

 few important economic plants. Some possess a bitter principle 

 in their rhizomes, and this has been used as a substitute for Sarsa- 

 parilla ; others, as Cyperus esculenlus, which is common in the 

 warmer parts of Africa and America, produce edible tubers. The 

 long-creeping rhizomes of some species, particularly Carex arenaria, 

 render the plants of great service in binding together the shifting 

 sands in maritime regions. In France mattresses are made from 

 the stems of Scirpus lacustris, and other Cyperacea? are used in the 

 making of mats and chairs. Cyperus Papyrus, or Papyrus Anti- 

 quorum, a native of swamps in Upper Egypt and other parts of 

 Tropical Africa and in Sicily, is the well-known Papyrus of the 

 ancients. The substance used as paper was obtained by pressing 

 and joining together thin longitudinal slices of the long stems. 



Spikelets many-flowered ; flowers 2-sexual ; perianth absent 

 or co)isisling of scales or bristles. 



1. Cyperus (Galingale). Perennial or rarely annual herbs, rush- 

 or grass-like ; spikelets linear, compressed, in lateral or terminal 

 heads or in umbels or panicles ; glumes in 2 rows, deciduous, all 

 or nearly all bearing a flower ; bristles ; stamens 1-3 ; stigmas 

 2 or 3. (Name from the Greek kupeiros, a reed.) 



2. Eleocharis (Spike-Rush). Tufted, usually perennial herbs 

 with slender stems ; spikelets terete, angular or compressed, soli- 

 tary, terminal ; glumes many, imbricate, mostly containing perfect 



