II._ON THE SEDGES OF NEBRASKA 

 (FAMILY CYPERACEAE) 



by john mallory bates 



Introduction 



The sedges (Family Cyperaceae) are grass-like plants, but easily 

 distinguished from the true grasses (Poaceae) by the following 

 characteristics: culms solid, pithy, cylindrical, trigonous or flat- 

 tened. Grass culms by contrast are mostly hollow and cylindrical. 

 Sheaths not open lengthwise opposite the leaf blade, tightly enclos- 

 ing the culm. Spikes simple or compound, mostly subtended by 

 leaflike bracts, which are sometimes longer than the culm. Spike- 

 lets one- to many-flowered, each flower subtended and sometimes 

 embraced by a single short herbaceous or scarious bract or scale, 

 the most characteristic mark of this family. Fruit an achene, 

 trigonous, lenticular, or plano-convex ; in the genus Carex only, 

 it is enclosed in a herbaceous sac called the perigynium. 



Like grasses, they grow in all kinds of soil from the wettest to 

 the driest, in the densest shade and on the open prairie, from the 

 tropics to the limits of vegetation in latitude and altitude. ]\Iany 

 are especially hardy, and flourish in the altitudes where grasses 

 are few, and start in the spring when pastures are still bare, 

 aflfording short feed for stock when it is most needed. On the 

 average, they are not as valuable for hay and pasturage as the 

 grasses, which is plainly shown by the fact that man has never 

 found one that seemed worthy of cultivation for agricultural pur- 

 poses, in rivalry with the grasses, which constitute the most valu- 

 able family of plants for the use of man in civilization. 



Nevertheless . the sedges form, in a stock-raising state like 

 Nebraska, a not unimportant part of both hay and pasturage, and 

 are eaten greedily, not only from necessity at times, but also for 

 the very desirable variety that is thus added to the rations of our 



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