Sedge

sej, a large family of grass-like plants. The most important genus is known to the botanist as carex. A grass stem is usually round and hollow. A carex, or sedge, may usually be told from a grass by having a triangular solid stem. The seeds or nutlets are frequently flat or triangular. They are not inclosed by chaff, but by a bladder, or else a closely adherent sac. There are about 2,500 species in the world; about 300 in the United States. The larger sedges grow chiefly in the swamps. Some are taller than a man's head; others, especially the wood-carex, grow in soft tufts underfoot. The seed of this sedge is borne on a stalk so short that it must be sought at the very roots, often half buried in leaf mold. The genus is not a valuable one, though many species may be made into hay. The salt marsh hay of the coasts is a sedge. The umbrella plant and the Egyptian paper plant or papyrus are members of the sedge family. See Grass