196 Field, Forest, and Wayside Flowers 



Each is reduced to its lowest terms, and is 

 merely a trio of stamens. 



Its flower-affinity consists of a pistil, borne on 

 a short stalk, and partly or completely surrounded 

 by a tiny green bract. The pistil forks at its tip 

 into two or three long stigmas, which reach over the 

 tiny bract close to them and the larger scale below 

 and wait for the pollen messages which the wind 

 will bring to them from other sedges. After the 

 pollen has come, the stigmas, having served their 

 purpose, wither away. At about the same time 

 the tiny bract which has invested the pistil in- 

 creases greatly in size, and by latter summer it 

 becomes an inflated flask-shaped sac, enclosing the 

 ripening fruit. This sac is known as the "perigy- 

 nium," and is one of the distinguishing marks of 

 the Carex family. Some botanists regard it as the 

 sepals and petals of the sedge-flower, joined to- 

 gether, and altered out of knowledge. 



Inside the perigynium there is a hard lens-shaped 

 or triangular body, which we should incline to call 

 a seed. But, small though it be, it is the ripened 

 ovary, and hence a fruit. 



The sedges, unlike the grasses, are a useless 

 family. They are of small value to man, and 

 their leaves and stems contain so little nutritious 



