Fescue Sedge
Carex festucaceaThe Fescue Sedge (Carex festucacea) belongs to a group in which there are several species that bear more or less resemblance to one another.
In these sedges the short, densely flowered spikes are round or oblong and are borne rather closely together at the summit of the stem. Fescue Sedge blooms in spring and early summer and is most frequently seen in dry soil.
The above species of the genus Carex are but a few of the most common sedges that may be found in many locations from Canada to the Gulf.
The majority of these plants bloom during spring and summer, although many of them retain their ripened seeds during the autumn months.
The sedges, no less than the grasses, have developed many interesting peculiarities of structure which aid in transporting the seeds to new fields: a few of the sedges growing in dry soil show wing-margined seed-pouches that are easily carried by the wind; some bear rough pouches that catch on passers-by and are carried far; sedges of marshlands often float their seeds in inflated sacs along the water's surface or buoy them by corky growths to which the base of the seed is attached.
None of Nature's children are so lowly that she neglects to prepare them for the world-long struggle for existence, and the methods which these humble forms have developed in order to enter into successful competition with the crowding life around them show the restless energy of living matter in its effort to exist and to perpetuate itself in life.