Field and Woodland Plants

by William S. Furneaux

The Common Sedge.

The reader should make himself thoroughly acquainted with the above features of the sedges, in order to avoid any confusion with the rushes, on the one hand, and with the grasses on the other; and he must not be led astray by the fact that some of the sedge family are popularly known as rushes.

Of this order the pretty Cotton Grasses (Eriophorum) often form a very conspicuous feature of marshes and other wet places. They are tufted or creeping plants with terminal spikelets, very much like those of the other sedges, but their flowers are perfect, and the bristles which represent the perianth grow to a considerable length as the flowering advances, protruding far beyond the overlapping glumes, and at last forming dense tufts of fine cottony hairs.

Two species are decidedly common and widely distributed, more especially the Common Cotton Grass (Eriophorum polystachyon), which is often so abundant as to give a general whitish appearance to whole patches of boggy land. It is a creeping plant, with solid, rigid, solitary stems, from six inches to over a foot in height; a few shorter, radical leaves; and a few leaves on the stem. Its spikelets, three to twelve in number, form a terminal cluster, the inner ones sessile, or nearly so, and the outer stalked and more or less drooping. They are at first oval or oblong, about half an inch long; but in fruit, usually in the month of June, they form dense cottony tufts from one to two inches in length.

The Marsh Sedge.

The other is the Hare's-tail or Sheathing Cotton Grass (E. vaginatum)—a tufted species, common on boggy moors, with many stems which are round below and triangular above, at first about six or eight inches high, but lengthening as the flowering advances. At the top of each stem is a solitary oval spikelet, of a dark brownish-green colour, over half an inch long, with many straight bristles that eventually form a dense, globular, cottony tuft about an inch in diameter. This is an earlier species, flowering during April and May.

The large genus Carex contains many common sedges with grass-like leaves springing from the base or the lower part of the stem. Some of them have a solitary spikelet; others have several spikelets in a terminal cluster or spike, with, sometimes, stalked spikelets below; or they are arranged in a compound spike or panicle. The flowers are all imperfect, without perianth; and the male and female flowers are either in separate spikelets or in different parts of the same one. The glumes overlap all round the axis of the spikelet; there are generally three stamens; and the ovary is enclosed in a little vase-shaped covering with a little hole at the top through which the two or three stigmas protrude.

We give illustrations of two of the commonest species; the Common Sedge (Carex vulgaris), which flowers from June to August; and the Marsh Sedge (C. paludosa), that flowers in May and June. The former grows to a height varying from six inches to two feet; and the latter to from two to three feet.