Grasses List
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Grasses List
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Sedge Club- & Spike-Rush Family [Cyperaceae] 
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category
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yellow
maleflower
green
femalepetals
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stem
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sex
| Search: Photo: © Dawn Nelson |
Growing in a shallow wet place amongst other plants (amongst another plant with glaucous-green leaves). Would you have guessed that Common Yellow-sedgeis the commonest of the 4 Yellow-sedges? |
| Search: Photo: © Dawn Nelson |
The yellowish-green fruits (female) and the much narrower brown spikes of the male flowers above them. Common Yellow-sedge, at between 5 to 30cm tall, is shorter and has denser tufts than those of Long-stalked Yellow-sedge. |
| Photo: (CC by 2.0) Geoff Toone |
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The brighter-green leaves and fruits are those of Common-yellow Sedge, again growing in a shallow wet place.
[But the glaucous leaves in the bottom left-hand corner and scattered elsewhere are the leaves of Black Sedge (Carex nigra)] |
| Photo: (CC by 2.0) Geoff Toone |
| Another specimen in the centre but with glaucous-green interlopers lurking at the top. The sheaths around the leaves lower down are at first pale but later become grey-brown when older. |
| Photo: (CC by 2.0) Geoff Toone |
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The brownish narrower male spikes and the yellowish-green female fruits with their long white beaks which terminate with tiny white forks.
The leaves are deep-green to yellow-green and between 1.5 to 5mm wide, with rigidity provided both by its thickness and by it lengthwise recurved keels. |
| Photo: (CC by 2.0) Geoff Toone |
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Male flower spikes brownish with a pale stripe up the centre but never making it to the ends. Female fruits pale-green with extended forked white stigma.
The inflorescence has just one orange brown male spikelet on a short 3-20mm long stalk at the summit, plus between 2 to 4 ovoidal to globose female spikelets on short stalks between 7 to 13mm long, which are all just below the male spike at the top apart from just one female spikelet much lower down which is on a much longer stalk. The bracts of the female spikes are just below each spike and look like leaves; the upper bracts exceeding the top of the the male inflorescence. |
| Photo: (CC by 2.0) Geoff Toone |
Female fruits pale-green with extended forked white stigmas. Most fork into two whilst a few others seem to fork into three, if your Author is not mistaken(?). The stems of Common Yellow-sedgeare more rounded than those of either Large Yellow-sedgeand Long-stalked Yellow-sedge. |
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| Photo: © RWD |
The green fruits mostly after having lost their long white forked styles. At just 3 to 4mm long the fruits are shorter than those of Long-stalked Yellow-sedge, egg-shaped, with a fairly long beak, greener and more obscurely ribbed than the fruits of either Large Yellow-sedgeor Long-stalked Yellow-sedge. The beaks are almost straight unlike the beaks of either Large Yellow-sedgeor Long-stalked Yellow-sedgewhich are slightly bent to one side. The beak is just 1mm long (2.0 to 2.5)mm long for Large Yellow-sedgeand 1.5 to 2mm long for Long-stalked Yellow-sedge. For specimen collectors - Beware the warping of the beak of the fruits when dried out... |
| Photo: (CC by 2.0) Geoff Toone |
| The fruits are squat, almost stalkless, in the axils of leaf branches. |
| Photo: (CC by 2.0) Geoff Toone |
| Another specimen of Common-Yellow Sedge. |
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Easily mis-identified as :
Hybridizes with :
It tends to avoid chalk or limestone soils preferring instead the less-acidic bogs, wet heaths, wet fields, beside lakes, moors, and non-calcareous flushes in mountains or heathy woodland paths and even on stony lake shores. It is more common than Clive Stace has left the native or other status blank, so that must mean that it is not known whether or not it is a native, an archaeophyte, neophyte, casual or alien.
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 Carex
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demissa
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⇐ Global Aspect ⇒ |
Cyperaceae
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 Carex (Sedge) |
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Sedge Club- & Spike-Rush Family [Cyperaceae]
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BSBI maps