ECONOMIC SEDGES 



CYPERUS 



BULBOSUS 



Edible Tubers 



prepared soil, or depositing them in furrows, each row of cuttings being covered 

 over by the preparation of the next furrow or by hand dibbling the cuttings all 

 over the field. 



It is the commonest and most useful grass in India, since its stems and roots 

 form a large proportion of the food of horses and cows ; it has great fattening and 

 milk-producing qualities. Makes good hay, which if carefully stacked will keep 

 for years. Voelcker (Improv. 2nd. Agri., 175) says of dub grass in India that " in 



Cultivation. many parts it comes up naturally or may be easily propagated from cuttings simply 



stuck in the ground. As a crop for irrigation it gives a great yield, and is_ about 

 the only grass that keeps green in the hot weather. To one coming newly to the 

 country it is surprising to notice how from an apparently burnt-up and dead 

 surface a crop of fresh grass will spring up on the first fall of rain." According 

 to the Madras Experimental Farm Manual, dub, like most other meadow grasses, 

 should be cut for hay directly the flowers appear, since under these circum- 

 stances the juices are more nutritious and the plant will produce another crop 

 much sooner. The great object should be to retain the green colour of the grass 

 by drying it as quickly as possible ; two or at the most three days should suffice 

 for making the hay, and if the dews are heavy it should be put into haycocks 

 at night. The richness of the saccharine juices renders the hay more liable to 

 heat and ferment, but excess in this direction may easily be checked by the 

 ordinary methods of putting pipes from the centre to the outside of the stack, 

 or building in two or three layers of dry paddy or cholam straw. 



It is necessary, however, to notice that c. Dctyion, while very easy to grow, 

 is very difficult to eradicate. In the Farm Rept. Bombay (1898-9, 6) it is said 

 to be a persistent weed in black soil and to require deep hand-digging in the hot 



Medicine. weather to destroy it. The plant is used medicinally and a cooling drink is said 



to be prepared from the roots. Dub is also used fairly extensively in Hindu 

 religious ceremonies, but it is necessary to distinguish carefully dub, dab, dab and 

 dib, which denote separate grasses. 



Orop 



D.E.P., 

 ii., 682-9. 

 Sedges. 



Two Economic 

 Groups. 



D.E.P., 

 ii., 683-5. 



Sandy 

 Situations. 



Pound Free 

 in the Soil. 



CYPERUS, Linn. ; II Br. Ind., vi., 591-619 ; Prain, Beng. Plants, 

 ii., 1138-45; CYPERACEJS. 



This genus of sedges contains some 60 Indian species. Most of these are 

 fairly valuable fodder plants, especially when young, others are dangerous weeds 

 of cultivated lands. A few yield culms and leaves that are employed hi thatching 

 and in grass-matting, and others afford tuberous rhizomes that are either eaten 

 (especially in times of scarcity) or are collected and sold as perfumes or medicines. 

 The greatest possible obscurity still prevails, however, as to the determination 

 of the Indian economic species, so that it may for the purposes of the present 

 work suffice to discuss them under two groups, those of value because of their 

 tuberous roots and those with culms and leaves utilised in mat-making. 



(A) Tuber O'us Rooted Forms : 



1. C. bulbosus, VahL ; Fl. Br. Ind., vi., 611; C.jemenicus, Retz.; 

 C. jemenicus, Linn., in Roxb., Fl. Ind., i., 192 ; Clarke, Journ. Linn. 

 Soc., xxi., 175, t. 2, fi. 17, 18 (but var. ft. excl.) ; also Journ. Bot., 1890, 

 xxviii., 18 ; FL Br. Ind., vi., 11 ; Trimen, Journ. Bot., n.s., 1884, xxii., 358- 

 61 ; Woodrow, Fl. W. Ind. in Journ. Bomb. Nat. Hist. Soc., xiii., 431 ; 

 Gammie, Rec. Bot. Surv. Ind., 1902, ii., 193. The shilandi, skilandi- 

 arisi, bid, iheg, puri-gaddi (the grass) and puri-dumpa (the bulbils). 



This small sedge is often very plentiful in sandy situations, as for example 

 in Sind and Baluchistan, the Upper Gangetic basin, the Deccan, Malabar, 

 the Coromandel Coast and Ceylon. It is distributed to Arabia, Abyssinia, 

 Central and North Africa. The characteristic (economic) feature of the plant is 

 the tuberous rhizomes (often called bulbils) that it produces. These are not 

 much larger than grains of rice, and since they are borne on long, thin, non-persis- 

 tent shoots they are found in great abundance in the soil, free from each other 

 and free from the parent plant. They are accordingly collected by sifting the 

 sandy soil. They are encased in several easily separated scaly coats and, after the 

 removal of these, are roasted and eaten or are soaked in water, washed, pounded 

 into a flour, and baked into bread or cooked into puddings, etc. They have no 

 aromatic property, and are strictly speaking edible not medicinal tubers. 



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