SAND SEDGE 213 



ESSENTIAL SPECIFIC CHARACTERS: 



321. Scirpns maritimuS) L. Stem caespitose, leaves numerous, 

 furrowed, linear, spikelets in cyme, many, brown. 



Sand Sedge (Carex arenaria, L.) 



This common maritime sedge is found in the North Temperate 

 Zone in Europe and Siberia, but not in any early plant beds. It 

 occurs in all maritime counties, except \V. Kent, S. Lines, N. Ebudes, 

 as far north as the Shetland Islands. Inland it is found in Surrey, 

 Norfolk, Suffolk, Ireland, and the Channel Islands. 



The Sand Sedge is a familiar seaside species, which is very widely 

 distributed and common on sandy coasts, growing on sand dunes and 

 elsewhere at high-water mark amongst grasses and herbage, and helping 

 to bind it together by its numerous stolons. 



From a creeping root, which forms a matted kind of growth over 

 a wide area, the stems are but short, with long, underground trailing 

 shoots lying on or near the surface, curved, 3-sided, 1 and roughish. 

 The leaves are rigid, with the margins rolled back. The bracts resemble 

 the leaves, the lower ones being subfoliaceous and membranous. 



The flowers are in spikelets, borne in a terminal spike, with barren 

 upper male flowers, the fertile ones below, many-flowered, crowded, and 

 interrupted. The spikes are flattened at the margin, and pale brown. 

 The nut is brownish in colour, and flat, plano-convex, with 2 ridges. 

 There are 2 stigmas with branched styles. The spikelets are more or 

 less unisexual. 



The Sand Sedge is 6 in. high. The flowers are found in June. 

 The plant is perennial, propagating itself rapidly in loose sand, on 

 which account it is used for planting to keep the coast unimpaired. 



The flowers are proterogynous, the stigmas ripening first, bringing 

 about cross-pollination, and they are wind-pollinated. The flowers 

 are solitary, and the lower are female, the upper male, and those in 

 the middle are bisexual. There are 2-3 stamens and 2 stigmas. 



The nut, a utricle (one-seeded), when ripe falls in the immediate 

 vicinity of the parent plants, being indehiscent, and thus clumps of the 

 plant are formed in course of time. The plant is also reproduced 

 vegetatively to a very great extent. 



It is a salt-lover, living in a saline soil, and at the same time a 

 sand plant, requiring a sand soil. 



Two stages of the fungi Puccinia arenariicola and P. schoeleriana 



1 Possibly connected with the threefold arrangement of the leaves. 



