58 



THE INDIANA WEED BOOK. 



roots fibrous. Flowers without petals or sepals, arranged in spike- 

 lets and usually solitary in the axils of each scale or glume; sta- 

 mens 1-3; ovary 1-celled, producing a single seed which in fruit 

 usually forms a three-cornered nutlet called an achene. 



About 160 species of the family are known from the State. For 

 the most part they grow in damp places, as the borders of streams 

 and lakes, along ditches and the margins of sloughs They are com- 

 monly known as sedges, cotton- 

 grasses, spike-rushes, bulrushes, nut- 

 grasses, etc., and have little or no 

 economic value. A few of them on 

 wet prairies and lake margins are 

 cut for hay, but it is coarse-stemmed 

 and of poor quality. Occupying 

 waste places, as they generally do, 

 they are given little attention by 

 the farmer, and though many of 

 them, did they grow in cultivated 

 ground, are abundant enough to be 

 called weeds, only a few have a ten- 

 dency to spread. Like the grasses, 

 the sedges are mostly plants of open 

 windswept places or marshy levels, 

 where the facilities for wind fertili- 

 zation are greatest and more usually 

 Fi g . 26. (After Smith.) present. 



11. CYPERUS ESCULENTUS L. Yellow Nut-grass. Galingale. (P. N. 3.) 



Stems erect, stout, triangular, 1-2^ feet tall, shorter than the basal 

 leaves, which are light green, 1/3 inch wide. Flowers in an umbel with 

 4-10 branches and involucre of 3-6 leaves ; spikelets numerous, straw- 

 colored, flat, their flower-stalk narrowly winged; style 3-cleft. Achenes 

 obovate-oblong, 3-angled. (Fig. 26.) 



Common in low cultivated ground which has been recently 

 drained. July Oct. Spreads by underground stems bearing small 

 pear-shaped tubers, -J- inch in length, at intervals of a few inches; 

 seeds also carried in hay, and grass seed, and the tubers often on 

 cultivating tools. The numerous tubers are edible, containing 

 about 22 per cent, of oil, 28 per cent, of starch and 12 to 21 per 

 cent, of gum and sugar. The oil when extracted is said to be most 

 excellent for cooking purposes. In rich sandy loams this sedge is 

 often allowed to grow as a food for hogs, which are turned into 

 the field in autumn to root up the tubers. Remedies: frequent 



