Grey Sedge (Carex Canescens, L. = C. Curta, Good.)

The habitat of this plant is bogs and marshes. The plant has the sedge habit. The plant is slender. The rootstock is tufted, with no stolons. The stems are 3-sided, smooth, hardly rough above, longer than the leaves. The leaves are narrow, flat. The spike is slender, interrupted, with few or no awl-like bracts. The spikelets are 3-8, egg-shaped, elliptic, touching the lower, often with a bract, male below only. The glumes are pale, the edges broad, membranous, white, with a green keel, blunt, short-pointed. The fruit is erect, acute, plano-convex, flattened, faintly ribbed, the ribs slender, whitish, broadly egg-shaped, as long as the glumes, pale-olive, not winged, with an obscure beak, short, notched, not split, rough on the borders. The nut is egg-shaped, elliptic, lenticular, with a short beak, pale. The styles are persistent. The plant is 1-2 ft. high, flowering in June and July, and is a herbaceous perennial.

Carex buxbaumii, Wahl. (= C. fusca, All. = C. polygama, Schkuhr). - The habitat of this plant is stony banks, spongy bogs, and wet places. The rootstock is short, creeping, stoloniferous. The stems are 3-sided, rigid, leafy below, rough. The leaves are narrow, flat, with reddish-brown, rigid sheaths, the edges net-like, filamentous. The lower bracts are leafy. The spikelets are 3-5, oblong, blunt, close, the lower distant, shortly-stalked. The glumes are rounded, blunt-pointed, the lower longer than the fruit, nearly black, or dark-red-brown, with a green keel which is blunt-pointed. The fruit is bluish-green, oval, ellipsoid, blunt, flattened, 3-angled at length, divided into 2 nearly to the base, shorter than the glumes, with slender ribs. The nut is 3-sided, inversely ovoid, brown, with white dots. There is no beak. The plant is 1-2 ft. in height, flowering in July, and is a herbaceous perennial.

Tufted Water Sedge (Carex Stricta, Good. = C. Elcta, A11. = C. Hudsonii, A. Benn.)

The habitat of this plant is marshy and peaty places. The plant has the sedge habit, and is slender. It is densely tufted. The stems are rigid, 3-sided, slightly rough above. The leaves are long, limp, erect, flat, narrow, the margin rolled back when dry, with long, reddish-brown, shining, filamentous leaf-sheaths, the lower leafless. The fertile spikelets are stalkless, erect or drooping, long, cylindrical, 1-3, sometimes male above, stout, the male spikelets slender, 1-2. The bracts are variable, auricled, the lower leaflike, short. The fruit is rounded to egg-shaped, oblong to elliptic, acute, flattened, veined, closely overlapping, with green nerves, dark-purple, and with a green keel, in 6-9 regular rows, larger than the glumes, and a sheathing beak. The beak is short, notched. The glumes are pitchy, dark-brown, in 8 rows, egg-shaped, blunt, short-pointed, the lower with an excurrent rough midrib. The glumes of the male spikelets are narrow, acute. The nut is inversely egg-shaped, round, short-beaked. The plant is 1-3 ft. high, flowering between May and July, and is a herbaceous perennial.