CHAPTER IV 



WHITE, CREAM, GREENISH WHITE 



Cotton Grass 



Eriophorum angustifblium. — Family, Sedge. Although possess- 

 ing no ordinary flowers, the cotton grass is so striking in mid- 

 summer, as it dots the swamps and cranberry marshes of Long 

 Island and northward with pure white, cottony-looking balls, it 

 seems worthy to lead the procession of white flowers. 



Grasses, sedges, and rushes have blossoms which, taken to- 

 gether, from their arrangement in little spikes, may be called 

 s pikelets. In this genus, 2 or 3 flowers spring from the axil of a 

 scaly bract. The s pikelets are grouped in terminal, drooping 

 umbels. The underlying scales, at first gray, become brownish. 

 The lower leaves are long, stiff, grass-like, clasping the stem. The 

 upper are just sheaths, without blades. 1 to 3 stamens, and a 

 1 -celled ovary compose the blossom, which, instead of calyx, pro- 

 duces many long slender, soft bristles, giving the cottony look 

 to this sedge. There are several species, mostly from England, 

 which brighten the moors of the mother-country. 



Stems of the Sedge Family are solid (rushes and grasses 

 are hollow or filled with pith), square, triangular, or flat. 



Bur-reed 



Spa.rga.nium simplex. — Family, Bur-reed. Flowers, without peri- 

 anth. Stamens and pistils separate, with bracts, collected in 

 heads along the upper part of the stem. Staminate flowers above; 

 pistillate ones below, from 1 to 4 in a head, consisting of sev- 

 eral pistils with a calyx-like set of scales underneath. Leaves, 

 long, narrow, flat, ribbon-like, sheathing at base, floating. July 

 and August. 



A rather strikingly pretty water plant, sometimes ter- 

 restrial, growing on the banks of streams. The fertile heads 

 become bur-like in fruit. The heads are separated by a 

 space on the stem. Perennials, springing from creeping, 

 horizontal rootstocks. Aquatics. (See illustration, p. 39.) 



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