THE SEDGE FAMILY 



CYPERACEAE 



"This common field, this little brook — 

 What is there hidden in these two?" 



Members of this family are protean in form; some, rising 

 leafless, are like green bayonets and are tipped with cylindrical 

 heads of blossoms; others, broad-leaved and spreading, seem like 

 exotics from tropical lands; some are tiny plants, rising but a few 

 inches from the soil ; while others, stout and erect, are higher than 

 one's shoulder and bear great flowering-heads of innumerable 

 spikelets. 



The study of these plants is most interesting, and indeed it is 

 impossible to study the common grasses without gathering a large 

 number of these "grass-like" plants which, however, refuse to be 

 included with the grasses, and often prove confusing to the student 

 unless he has a definite idea of the distinguishing characteristics of 

 each family. 



Resembling the green grasses in colour, sedges are most fre- 

 quently spoken of as "grass," though they belong to a separate 

 family and show their distinctive traits in flower and growth; the 

 three-ranked leaves easily referring each sedge to its proper family, 

 since in all grasses the leaves are but two-ranked upon the stems. 



The basal portion of each sedge leaf encloses the stem, as in the 

 grasses, but with this noticeable difference, that the sheaths of 

 sedges are perfectly closed while grass sheaths are usually split on 

 the side of the stem opposite the leaf. With few exceptions the 

 stems of sedges are solid, and in many species are sharply trian- 

 gular. The flowers are small and are arranged in spikelets, but 

 instead of several scales enclosing each flower, as in the grasses, 

 each sedge blossom is protected by but a single scale, though a 

 perianth is sometimes present in the form of small bristles. 



Many genera are comprised in the family, but the most numer- 

 ous species are found among the sedges that belong to the genus 

 Carex, and these in northern countries equal the grasses in number. 



259 



