384 
Order CCLXVIII. CYPERACE.B. The Sedge Tribe. 
CYPERCiDEiE, Juss. Geti. 26. (1789) ; Link. Hort. Botanic. 1. (1827). — Cyperace.®, R. 
Brown Prodr. 212. (1810) ; Lestiboudois Essai ; DC. and Duty, 483. (1828) ; Lindl. 
Synops. 278. (1829) ; Nees von Esenbeck in Linnwa, 9. 273. (1835). 
Essential Character. — Flowers hermaphrodite or unisexual, consisting of imbricated 
solitary bracts, very rarely enclosing other opposite bracts at right angles with the first, 
called Pe?'ianf/i none, unless the glumes, when present, be so considered, or the 
hypogynous setae. Stamens hypogynous, definite, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 12; anthers fixed 
by their base, entire, 2-celled. Ovary 1 -seeded, often surrounded by bristles called hypo- 
gynous setae, probably constituting the rudiments of a perianth ; ovule erect ; style single, 
trifid, or bifid ; stigmas undivided, occasionally bifid. Nut crustaceous or bony. Albumen 
of the same figure as the seed ; embryo lenticular, undivided, enclosed within the base 
of the albumen; plumule inconspicuous. — Roots fibrous. Stems very often without 
joints, 3-cornered, or taper. Leaves with their sheaths entire. The lowermost bracts often 
sterile. 
Affinities. These so nearly resemble the last tribe in appearance, that 
the one may be readily mistaken for the other by incurious persons ; they are, 
however, essentially distinguished by many important points of structure. In 
the first place, their stems are solid and angular, not round and fistular ; there 
is no diaphragm at the articidations ; their flowers are destitute of any other 
covering than that afforded them by a single bract, in the axil of which they 
grow, with the exception of Carex, Uncinia, and Diplacrum, in which 2 
opposite glumes are added ; and, Anally, the seed has its embryo lying in one 
end of the albumen, within which its cotyledonar extremity is enclosed, and 
not on the outside, as in Grasses ; a very important fact, which it is the more 
necessary to point out, as Brown describes it {Prodr. 212) as lenticular and 
placed on the outside of the albumen. The additional glumes above adverted 
to form what Linnsean botanists call the nectary or aril ! Brown mentions a 
case where these glumes, which he calls a capsular perianth, included stamens 
instead of a pistil. According to Turpin, rudiments of them sometimes appear 
in different species of Mariscus. The close affinity of Cyperaceae, on the one 
hand, to Grasses, is sufficiently apparent; on the other, they approach 
Juncacese and Restiacese, in the glumaceous state of the perianth, and in 
general habit. They are at once known from Restiacese by the sheaths of the 
leaves not being sht. The species are extremely diflicult to determine, and 
the distinctive characters of the genera were unsatisfactory, until Professor 
Nees V. Esenbeck skilfully rearranged the order in the place above quoted. 
Geography. Found in marshes, ditches, and running streams, in meadows 
and on heaths, in groves and forests, on the blowing sands of the sea-shore, 
on the tops of mountains, from the arctic to the antarctic circle, wherever 
Phsenogamous vegetation can exist. Humboldt remarks, that in Lapland 
Cyperacese are equal to Graminese, but that thence, from the temperate zone 
to the equator, in the northern hemisphere, the proportion of C^qieracese to 
Graminese very much diminishes. As we approach the line, the character of 
the order also changes : Carex, Scirpus, Schoenus, and their allies, cease to 
fonn the principal mass of the order, the room of which is usurped by 
Cyperus, KyUinga, Mariscus, and the like, genera comparatively unknown in 
northern regions, or at least not forming any marked feature in the vegeta- 
tion. A few species are common to very difibrent parts of the world, as 
Scirpus triqueter and capitatus, and Fuirena umbellata, to New Holland 
and South America, and several Scirpuses to Europe and the southern 
hemisphere. 
Properties. While Grasses are celebrated for their nutritive quahties, 
and for the abundance of fsecula and sugar they contain. Sedges are little less 
