76 SUMMER 



times called the sweet sedge, but belongs to a distinct family 

 from the other sedges. The handsome plant usually known 

 as the bulrush is also not a rush ; its right name is the greater 

 reed-mace. The tall plant usually known as the giant rush 

 is the true bulrush ; it is the graceful stem, six or eight feet 

 high, often with a tuft of green blossom at the top, which 

 grows in the shallower water, but not on land. Though it is 

 so much like a large rush, and is used to seat rush-bottomed 

 chairs, it is really not a rush but a sedge. In small streams 

 the giant rush chiefly contributes to the great rafts of vegeta- 

 tion which collect against outstretched boughs of hawthorns 

 and willows, and form playgrounds and resting-places for the 

 water-rats and moorhens. The stems die, and turn brown 

 and brittle, in autumn, and rap against each other with a 

 peculiar restless pattering as they are plucked by the fuller 

 stream. Presently it snaps them off, and they break into 

 short lengths as they turn head-over-heels in the flooded 

 channels. The dipped bough catches the light wreckage, 

 and the stream continually adds to it and piles it higher, 

 until nearly a cart-load of dead bulrush stems may be heaped 

 among the boughs of the anchoring bush. As spring and 

 summer advance the heap grows smaller than after the 

 December floods, but settles into a more solid mass ; and by 

 the time that the new giant rushes are tall above the stream, 

 it is hard to tell the nature and origin of the mysterious 

 haycocks piled among the overhanging boughs. 



The flowering rush is another delightful plant of the 

 river-bank which is no real rush. It is not uncommon about 

 midsummer along the Thames and other lowland rivers with 

 a rich vegetation, though it is seldom found abundantly. It 

 has a loose cluster of rosy blossoms springing from the very 

 tip of its long slender stem. More local and confined to part 

 of the Thames basin is the summer snowflake, or Loddon 



