THE STAR GRASSES. 199 



grass" (Glyceria maritima), yet the product per acre is 

 so much larger as to make it a more desirable crop. 



There is also a small family of plants called the yel- 

 low-eyed grasses, or the star grasses, consisting of 

 only two species, the first of which is the YELLOW- 

 EYED GRASS (Xyris bulbosa), flowering in July, August, 

 and September, growing on sandy and peaty soils, arid 

 bogs near the coast ; and the second, the COMMON YEL- 

 LOW-EYED GRASS (Xyris caroliniana), flowering in 

 August, on sandy swamps. These are beautiful grasses, 

 but of no special agricultural value. 



The sedges and plants constituting the coarse and 

 innutritious herbage, properly included in the term 

 CAREX, form a large and prominent genus of grass-like 

 plants, consisting in all of about four hundred and fifty 

 species, known to botanists, extensively diffused over 

 all the damp parts of the globe, and in popular language 

 called grasses. 



The roots of the sedges are perennial, and for the 

 most part creeping, a few being tufted and fibrous. 

 The stems are simple and free from joints or nodes. 

 The leaves are linear, flat, pointed, roughish on the sur- 

 face, and sharp on the edges. 



A few species of carex grow on sandy hills and along 

 the sea-shore ; but most inhabit marshes, wet meadows, 

 swamps, and the low, wet banks of streams and ditches, 

 and moist woods. None of them are of any real agri- 

 cultural value, though they constitute mainly what is 

 termed " meadow hay," or more properly swale hay, in 

 some parts of the country. They are nearly desti- 

 tute of mealy and saccharine principles, in which many 

 of the true grasses abound, and are eaten by cattle only 

 when compelled by hunger, in the want of better 

 grasses. It not unfrequently happens, however, that 



