On the identification of sedges.
Jun. 9th, 2019 01:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickWhat the fuck is a sedge? A sedge is a grasslike plant with triangular stems and inconspicuous flowers, growing typically in wet ground. They grow all over throughout temperate and cold regions, where there be swampy bits.
I live, more or less, in a swampy with all swampy bits. There are several different kinds of sedges here.
1. The kind with the drooping seedheads
2. The kind with the bristly seedheads of many
3. The kind with the bristly seedheads of few
4. The kind with the clumpy seedheads
5. The small kind with the kitty paw seedheads
Here is a picture of the readily-available sedges that I don't have to walk very far to get. Kind 3 not-shown because it's too far to walk in the rain.
We need to know about sedges because this is NOT AN OK WAY OF TALKING ABOUT THE SEDGES. Plus they're kind of pretty. They should have names.
Botany students and ecology people and shit learn the following rhyme.
Sedges have edges, rushes are round, grasses have nodes from the tips to the ground.
But then once you have a sedge (usually it grows in the wet and has a triangular stem, that's the "edges" part)... then what next?
Normal people who want to know about stuff buy a field guide. I did that -- Sedges: Carex by Mohlenbrock, from the Illustrated Flora of Illinois series. It has line drawings. There are not a shitton of sedge identification guides because apparently not a lot of people want to know about sedges. (I do not give two shits for what other people do.) This sedge book is supposed to be quite good.
Flipping through the field guide, I can see that it contains textual descriptions rather like the following (italics are mine):
Plants perennial, densely cespitose, from short, stout rhisomes, culms to 1 m tall, stout, triangular, smooth or scabrous, purplish at the base, often with last year's leaves persistent; leaves up to 7mm wide glabrous, septate-nodulose, dull green, scabrous along the margins, some of them overtopping the culms, sheaths tight, pale or tan or the lower reddish, the ventral band weakly nerved, concave or truncate at the mouth, the ligule longer than wide, terminal spike I, staminate up to 7 cm long, up to 3mm thick, sessile or short-pedunculate, staminate scales serrulate-awned, pale brown with hyaline margins, lateral spikes I-4, pistillate, thick-cylindric to ovoid, 1.5 to 4 cm long, 1.5 to 2 cm thick, all but sometimes the lowest erect or ascending, on short glabrous peduncules, bracts leaflike, pistillate scales linear, abruptly contracted to a serrulate awn, usually reaching the base of the beak of the perigynium, perigynia up to 100 or more per spike, crowded, 6-9mm long 3-4mm thick, yellow-brown, membranous, inflated, shiny, glabrous, spreading to ascending but not reflexed,gradually tapering to a bidentate beak 3-4mm long, the beak about as long as the body, achenes trigonous 2-2.5 mm long yellow-brown, sub-stipitate, continuous with the persistent style, stigmas 3.
There are a lot of words there that I don't fucking know. I have italicized them, above. This is a species account of a sedge, enough words to describe it from all other sedges. But that's not helpful when I don't know the fucking words or what part of the plant they refer to.
densely cespitose: Forming dense clumps or tufts.
culm: stem or stalk, frequently the flower-bearing one.
scabrous: rough
glabrous: Hairless, smooth
septate-nodulose (best def. I could find was this: Leaves of Carex are typically linear and have a ligule at the junction of the blade and the sheath. The ligule is mostly fused to the blade, with a narrow, entire or erose-ciliate free portion. Sheaths are often differentiated, with the front (the side opposite the blade) being thin, translucent, and sometimes dotted or veined. When veined, the disintegration and tearing of the sheath front may leave a regular pattern of veins described as ladder-fibrillose. In some wetland species, the sheaths are spongy with large air cavities between the cross veins. Upon drying, the collapse of these air cavities results in the cross veins becoming very prominent, a condition termed septate-nodulose. )
ligule: The ligule is part of the leaf that is found at the junction of the blade and sheath of the leaf.
staminate: The male flower, on sedges this is the non-seed thing.
sessile or short-pendunculate: doesn't have much of a stem
serrulate-awned: an Awn is a long, bristle-like appendage, serrulate means toothed or serrated.
hyaline: transluscent
pistillate: the pistil flower, containing no stamens.
peduncle: stalk of an inflorescence
perigynium: a sac from a modified tubular bract, or when fully closed an utricle, around the pistillate flower of sedges
beak: A prominent pointed terminal projection, especially of a carpel or fruit. (Bidentate means "having two points"
achenes: seed
trigonous: three-sided
sub-stipiate -- stipiate means stalked. Sub-stipiate, maybe less-stalked.
So yeah, we've got some vocabulary-learning to get a handle on if we're gonna learn us some sedges. But, happily, sedges are a lot happier about in-hand identification than odonates. And we need to learn the Parts Of A Sedge. Fortunately for you people, it is raining this afternoon and there is no playin' odes in the rain. (I played horse at 6 AM today. It was not raining then, either.) But I can play sedges in the rain. :)
I live, more or less, in a swampy with all swampy bits. There are several different kinds of sedges here.
1. The kind with the drooping seedheads
2. The kind with the bristly seedheads of many
3. The kind with the bristly seedheads of few
4. The kind with the clumpy seedheads
5. The small kind with the kitty paw seedheads
Here is a picture of the readily-available sedges that I don't have to walk very far to get. Kind 3 not-shown because it's too far to walk in the rain.
We need to know about sedges because this is NOT AN OK WAY OF TALKING ABOUT THE SEDGES. Plus they're kind of pretty. They should have names.
Botany students and ecology people and shit learn the following rhyme.
Sedges have edges, rushes are round, grasses have nodes from the tips to the ground.
But then once you have a sedge (usually it grows in the wet and has a triangular stem, that's the "edges" part)... then what next?
Normal people who want to know about stuff buy a field guide. I did that -- Sedges: Carex by Mohlenbrock, from the Illustrated Flora of Illinois series. It has line drawings. There are not a shitton of sedge identification guides because apparently not a lot of people want to know about sedges. (I do not give two shits for what other people do.) This sedge book is supposed to be quite good.
Flipping through the field guide, I can see that it contains textual descriptions rather like the following (italics are mine):
Plants perennial, densely cespitose, from short, stout rhisomes, culms to 1 m tall, stout, triangular, smooth or scabrous, purplish at the base, often with last year's leaves persistent; leaves up to 7mm wide glabrous, septate-nodulose, dull green, scabrous along the margins, some of them overtopping the culms, sheaths tight, pale or tan or the lower reddish, the ventral band weakly nerved, concave or truncate at the mouth, the ligule longer than wide, terminal spike I, staminate up to 7 cm long, up to 3mm thick, sessile or short-pedunculate, staminate scales serrulate-awned, pale brown with hyaline margins, lateral spikes I-4, pistillate, thick-cylindric to ovoid, 1.5 to 4 cm long, 1.5 to 2 cm thick, all but sometimes the lowest erect or ascending, on short glabrous peduncules, bracts leaflike, pistillate scales linear, abruptly contracted to a serrulate awn, usually reaching the base of the beak of the perigynium, perigynia up to 100 or more per spike, crowded, 6-9mm long 3-4mm thick, yellow-brown, membranous, inflated, shiny, glabrous, spreading to ascending but not reflexed,gradually tapering to a bidentate beak 3-4mm long, the beak about as long as the body, achenes trigonous 2-2.5 mm long yellow-brown, sub-stipitate, continuous with the persistent style, stigmas 3.
There are a lot of words there that I don't fucking know. I have italicized them, above. This is a species account of a sedge, enough words to describe it from all other sedges. But that's not helpful when I don't know the fucking words or what part of the plant they refer to.
densely cespitose: Forming dense clumps or tufts.
culm: stem or stalk, frequently the flower-bearing one.
scabrous: rough
glabrous: Hairless, smooth
septate-nodulose (best def. I could find was this: Leaves of Carex are typically linear and have a ligule at the junction of the blade and the sheath. The ligule is mostly fused to the blade, with a narrow, entire or erose-ciliate free portion. Sheaths are often differentiated, with the front (the side opposite the blade) being thin, translucent, and sometimes dotted or veined. When veined, the disintegration and tearing of the sheath front may leave a regular pattern of veins described as ladder-fibrillose. In some wetland species, the sheaths are spongy with large air cavities between the cross veins. Upon drying, the collapse of these air cavities results in the cross veins becoming very prominent, a condition termed septate-nodulose. )
ligule: The ligule is part of the leaf that is found at the junction of the blade and sheath of the leaf.
staminate: The male flower, on sedges this is the non-seed thing.
sessile or short-pendunculate: doesn't have much of a stem
serrulate-awned: an Awn is a long, bristle-like appendage, serrulate means toothed or serrated.
hyaline: transluscent
pistillate: the pistil flower, containing no stamens.
peduncle: stalk of an inflorescence
perigynium: a sac from a modified tubular bract, or when fully closed an utricle, around the pistillate flower of sedges
beak: A prominent pointed terminal projection, especially of a carpel or fruit. (Bidentate means "having two points"
achenes: seed
trigonous: three-sided
sub-stipiate -- stipiate means stalked. Sub-stipiate, maybe less-stalked.
So yeah, we've got some vocabulary-learning to get a handle on if we're gonna learn us some sedges. But, happily, sedges are a lot happier about in-hand identification than odonates. And we need to learn the Parts Of A Sedge. Fortunately for you people, it is raining this afternoon and there is no playin' odes in the rain. (I played horse at 6 AM today. It was not raining then, either.) But I can play sedges in the rain. :)
