Rushes and Sedges 193 



after accomplishing their life-work. The pistil has 

 done its work, too. It is now a fruit, ripe and 

 ready to travel, for around it are six long hairs, 

 which are the petals and sepals, altered over into a 

 flying apparatus. In the "beak-rush," which we 

 may find growing near the "wool-grass," calyx and 

 corolla have undergone an equally great but 

 wholy different adaptation. 



They are converted into barbed bristles, which 

 catch hold where and when they can, and thus 

 help the seed along in the world. 



The calyx and corolla of the pretty "cotton- 

 grass" are changed, like those of the "wool- 

 grass," into long streamers, which lengthen as the 

 seed matures, and become a tuft of creamy fila- 

 ments, an inch or two in length. They make this 

 sedge a conspicuous and beautiful object in low- 

 lying fields, when olive and bronze shades begin 

 to replace the vivid greens of the earlier year 



(Fig- SO- 



The true "bulrush" and the "spike-rush" 

 (Fig. 51), which are both sedges, in spite of their 

 misleading names, have adopted the beak-rush's 

 plan, and changed their petals and sepals into 

 toothed bristles, which look, through the micro- 

 scope, like narrow saw-blades. 



