884 



THE SEDGE FAMILY. 



Fig. 1066. 



2 inner ones. Stamens in the males 4. 

 Stigmas and lobes of the ovary in the 

 females 2. 



A North American species, abundant 

 in the lakes of the isles of Skye, Coll, 

 and a few of the neighbouring He- 

 brides, and of Connemara, in Ireland, 

 but not elsewhere in Europe. Fl. Au~ 

 gust. 



LXXXVI. THE SEDGE FAMILY. CYPERACE^. 



Herbs, resembling in aspect the Hushes, or more frequently 

 the Grasses, but usually stiffer than the latter, with solid stems, 

 and the sheaths of the leaves closed all round. Flowers in little 

 green or brown spikes, called spilcelets, which are either solitary 

 and terminal, or several in a terminal (or apparently lateral) 

 simple or compound cluster, spike, umbel, or panicle. Each spike- 

 let is placed in the axil of a scale-like or leafy outer bract, and 

 consists of several scale-like, imbricated bracts, called glumes, 

 each containing in its axil one sessile flower. Perianth either 

 none or replaced by a few bristles or minute scales. Stamens 

 3 or rarely 2. Ovary (in the same or in a distinct glume) simple, 

 1-celled, the style more or less deeply divided into 2 or 3 branches 

 or linear stigmas. Eruit a small, seed-like nut, flattened when 

 the style is 2-cleft, triangular when it is 3 -cleft, containing a 

 single seed. 



A large family, abundantly distributed all over the globe, but more 

 especially in moist situations or on the edges of waters. It is inter- 

 mediate as it were between the Hushes and the Grasses, distinguished 

 from the former by the absence of any regular perianth, from Grasses 



