THE SEDGES 



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the Distant- 

 spiked Sedge, 

 the reverse 

 plan becomes 

 the habit of 

 the plant. 

 There are 

 over seventy 

 varieties o f 



CAREX LEPORISA. 



Briti.sh Sedges of the 

 Carex family, each adopt- 

 ing its own particular 

 mode of growth, or 

 specialisation. Of the 

 two last-named species, 

 the latter, a slender type 

 of Sedge, likes damp 

 copses or places where 

 there is some sort of 

 shelter ; whereas the 

 stout three-angled stem, 

 in wet fields or marshes in the open. 



There is much diversity in the relative 

 position of the spikelets with regard to 

 each other, and in the length or short- 

 ness of their stalks — Carex glauca having 

 in the lowest pistillate spikelets five 

 curving stalks of perhaps two inches 

 long ; C. miiricata, or Great Prickly 

 Sedge, having the vtTy small spikelets 



quite stalkless and set in the leaf -angles 

 of the stem. Its growth is slender, with 

 narrow leaves and a rough three-angled 

 stem, and it is found in a tutted fasliif^n 

 on dry pastures. Of the stouter species, 

 when the stems run to four and five feet 

 high, making great masses of growth 

 as much, perhaps, as four feet acrrjss, one 

 might name Carex paniculala, the Great 



Panicled Sedge ; 

 Carex aculi/ormis, 

 the Pond Sedge ; 

 and Carex riparia, 

 the Greater Pond 

 Sedge, and largest 

 British species, 

 with as many as 

 twelve large spike- 

 lets — a ditch jjlant 

 and quite commr>ri. 



/ 



CAIiEX FLAVA. 



former, with a 

 finds its home 



The W o o d 

 Sedges are m^jsth' 

 familiar to us — 

 both Carex sylvatica 

 and Carex pendula ; 

 although, perhaps, 

 Carex depanperala, 

 or Starved Wo(jd 

 Sedge, is not so 

 c r> m m o n 1 y met 

 with. As the name 



COMMON TUFTED 

 SEDGE. 



