196 Field, Forest, and Wayside Flowers 
Each is reduced to its lowest terms, and is 
merely a trio of stamens. 
Its flower-affinity consists of a pistil, borne on 
a short stalk, and partly or completely surrounded 
by a tiny green bract. The pistil forks at its tip 
into two or three long stigmas, which reach over the 
tiny bract close to them and the larger scale below 
and wait for the pollen messages which the wind 
will bring to them from other sedges. After the 
pollen has come, the stigmas, having served their 
purpose, wither away. At about the same time 
the tiny bract which has invested the pistil in- 
creases greatly in size, and by latter summer it 
becomes an inflated flask-shaped sac, enclosing the 
ripening fruit. This sac is known as the ‘‘perigy- 
nium,” and is one of the distinguishing marks of 
the Carex family. Some botanists regard it as the 
sepals and petals of the sedge-flower, joined to- 
gether, and altered out of knowledge. 
Inside the perigynium there is a hard lens-shaped 
or triangular body, which we should incline to call 
a seed. But, small though it be, it is the ripened 
ovary, and hence a fruit. 
The sedges, unlike the grasses, are a useless 
family. They are of small value to man, and 
their leaves and stems contain so little nutritious 
