PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
293 
(3) The current that with gentle murmur glides, 
Thou knowest, being stopped, impatiently doth rage ; 
But when his fair course is not hindered, 
He makes sweet music with the enamell’d stones, 
Giving a gentle kiss to every Sedge 
He overtaketh in his pilgrimage ; 
And so by many winding nooks he strays 
With willing sport to the wild ocean. 
Two Gentlemen of Verona , ii. 7, 25. 
(4) Alas, poor hurt fowl ! now will he creep into Sedges. 
Much Ado About Nothing, ii. 1, 209. 
(5) The gentle Severn’s Sedgy bank.— 1 st Henry IV, i. 3, 98. 
(6) See Reeds, No. 7. 
Sedge is from the Anglo-Saxon Secg, and meant almost 
any waterside plant. Thus we read of the Moor Secg, and 
the Red Secg; and the Sea Holly ( Eryngium maritimuvi) is 
called the Holly Sedge. And so it was doubtless used by 
Shakespeare. In our day Sedge is confined to the genus 
Carex, a family growing in almost all parts of the world, and 
containing about 1000 species, of which we have fifty-eight 
in Great Britain; they are most graceful ornaments both 
of our brooks and ditches; and some of them will make 
handsome garden plants. One very handsome species— 
perhaps the handsomest—is C. pendula , with long tassel-like 
flower-spikes hanging down in a very beautiful form, which 
is not uncommon as a wild plant, and can easily be grown 
in the garden, and the flower-spikes will be found very hand¬ 
some additions to tall nosegays. There is another North 
American species, C. Fraseri , which is a good plant for the 
north side of a rock-work: it is a small plant, but the flower 
is a spike of the purest white, and is very curious, and unlike 
any other flower, 
