CYPERACE^E. (SEDGE FAMILY.) 365 



ORDER 87. CYPERACE^E. (SEDGE FAMILY.) 



Grass-like or rush-like herbs, with fibrous roots, mostly solid stems, 

 closed sheaths, and spiked chiefly 3-androus flowers, one in the axil of 

 each of the glume-like imbricated bracts, destitute of any perianth, or 

 with hypogynous bristles or scales in its place, the 1 -celled ovary in 

 fruit forming an akene. Style 2 or 3-cleft. Stem leaves when present 

 3-ranked. 



* Flowers all perfect : spikelets few to many-flowered, solitary or spicate, the spikes capi- 



tate or umbellate : only 1 or 2 of the lower scales usually empty. SCIRPINE.E. 

 - Spikelets more or less flattened, the scales being in 2 ranks : inflorescence involu- 

 crate. CYPERE^E. 

 ! Cyperus. Perianth (bristles, etc.) none. Style slender, deciduous. Spikelets spicate 



or clustered. Stamens 1 to 3. 



- - Spikelets many -flowered, not flattened, the scales imbricated all around. SCIRPEJE. 

 H- Style not dilated at base. 



2. Scirpus. Spikelets solitary or clustered or in a compound umbel, the stem often 



leafy at base and inflorescence involucrate. Style deciduous or only the base per- 

 sistent. Barbed bristles present at the base of the akene or wanting. Stamens 

 mostly 3. 



3. Eriophorum. Like the last, but the numerous naked bristles long-exserted and silky 



in fruit. Spikelets few. Stamens 1 to 3. 



4. Hemicarpha. Like Scirpus, but without bristles and with a minute hyaline bractlet 



between each flower and the rhachis. Spikelets solitary or few in a sessile apparently 

 lateral cluster. Stamen 1. 



H. -H- Style enlarged at base. 



5. Eleocharis. Spikelet solitary, terminal upon a leafless bractless stem. Base of the 



style persistent. Bristles usually present. Stamens 3. 



6. Fimbristylis. Spikelets in an involucrate umbel Stem leafy at base. Style usually 



wholly deciduous. Bristles none. Stamens 1 to 3. 



* * Flowers monoecious ; the staminate and pistillate in the same spike, which is terminal 



(in ours) : akene naked, without bristles. SCLERINE^E. 



7. Kobresia. Spikelets sessile in a terminal spike, with a glume-like bract under each 



spikelet. Stem leafy at base. Base of the style persistent. Stamens 3. 



* * * Flowers monoecious, in the same or distinct spikelets, or dioecious : akene enclosed 



in an inflated sac-like persistent perigynium. CARICINE^E. 



8. Carex. Spikelets solitary, spicate or paniculate. Hypogynous bristles or scales wholly 



wanting or a single short bristle at the base of the ovary. 



1. CYPERUS, L. GALINGALE. 



Scales concave or keeled, often decurrent upon the rhachis. Akene lenticu- 

 lar or triangular, not beaked, usually smooth. With mostly triangular and 

 nearly naked simple stems, sheathed at base by the nearly radical leaves : 

 inflorescence subtended by a mostly conspicuous leafy involucre, usually irregu- 

 larly umbellate with unequal rays, the spikelets in spikes solitary or clustered 

 upon the rays, the central spike or cluster always sessile, and the whole often 

 contracted into a single more or less dense head. Ours all belong to EUCY- 

 PERUS, in which the style is 3-cleft and akene triangular, the spikelets many- 

 flowered, with carinate scales, and with the rhachis naked or nearly so. 



