SHAKESPEARE’S GARDEN 
79 
And speak . . . with a reed voice. 
Merchant of Venice , III. iv. 66. 
Other references are metaphorical. 
Sedges are, more correctly speaking, members of 
the Cyperaceae, an order very generally distinguished 
by its triangular stems. Of the principal genus, 
Carex, some sixty or more species are native, some in 
dry, the majority in moist situations, and ranging in 
size from a few inches to 5 feet ( Carex riparia, 
Curtis). 
The gentle Severn’s sedgy bank (i Henry IV., I. iii. 98) 
calls up to the poet's mind some very pretty 
allusions. Thus, we have ( Taming of the Shrew, 
Induct, ii. 53): 
And Cytherea all in sedges hid, 
Which seem to move and wanton with her breath, 
Even as the waving sedges play with wind. 
And, again ( Tempest , IV. i. 128): 
You nymphs, called Naiads, of the winding brooks, 
With your sedged crowns and ever harmless looks. 
And in Two Gentlemen of Verona , II. vii. 25 : 
The current that with gentle murmur glides,. . . 
He makes sweet music with the enamell’d stones, 
Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge. 
In connection with these reeds and sedges we may 
well take the more highly organized rushes, members 
of the order Juncaceae. Of these we have two 
groups : the true rushes and the woodrushes. 
The former, of which twenty-three species are 
found along our rivers or in our marshes, are noticed 
by Shakespeare no less than eighteen times. Some 
may, as Ellacombe suggests, refer to the bulrush and 
sweet rush, members of other orders. As mere trifles „ 
