Spring Sedge
Scientific name: Carex caryophyllea Latourr.
Family: Cyperaceae
MORPHOLOGY
Habit and size: Perennial herbaceous plant, 10-40 cm tall, with long rhizomes, forming loose clumps with short lateral stolons.
Stem: Robust stem, obtusely triangular, smooth, more or less rough in the upper part. Basal sheaths brown, squamiform, entire or more or less fibrous.
Leaves: Flat leaves, 1.5-4.5 mm wide, ± rigid, opaque, shorter than the stem, rough at the margins in the upper part.
Flowers: Compact brownish inflorescence, 1.5-4 cm long, consisting of 1 apical male spike and (1) 2-3 (8) lower female spikes. Male spike typically club-shaped or oblong, 1-2 cm long; glume glabrous, oblong, brown or reddish-brown, without a scarious margin, apex acute or subacute, or shortly awned.
Female spikes sessile, erect, ovoid, 0.5-2 cm long, clustered below the male spike; glume glabrous, broadly oval, without a scarious margin, with acute, mucronate, or awned apex, brown or reddish-brown, shorter or equal to the utricles. Blooms between February and May.
Fruits and seeds: The fruits are pseudanthia (utricle) of (2)2.5-3(3.5) x 1.2-1.7 mm, suberect, obovate-triangular, with scarcely perceptible nerves, shortly pubescent, green or brown, with a beak usually slightly bidentate. Achenes 1.7-2.1 x 1-1.6 mm, elliptic or obovate, trigonous, dark brown.
DISTRIBUTION AND HABITAT
Found throughout Italy in meadows and pastures between 0 and 2,000 m.
Photo: under free license from Saxifraga and Willem van Kruijsbergen, Jan van der Straaten, Rutger Barendse





















