Kansas Wildflowers and Grasses

MEAD'S SEDGE

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Carex meadii Dewey

Konza Prairie, Riley County, Kansas

Perennial

Height: 8-20 inches

Family: Cyperaceae - Sedge Family

Flowering Period: April, May

Culms:

Erect, stout, stiff, triangular; bases usually pale brown.

Leaves:

Blades mostly basal, 6-10, flat, stiff, to 1/4 inch wide, grayish green, glabrous; margins rough.

Sheaths:

Tight, usually pale brown.

Inflorescences:

Spikes, unisexual; terminal spike solitary, staminate, club-shaped, to 1.5 inch long, less than 1/6 inch thick, long-stalked; staminate scales blunt, purplish brown with transparent margins and green centers; lateral spikes 1-3, pistillate, oblong-cylindric, up to 1.25 inch long, about .25 inch thick, stalked or uppermost nearly sessile, occasionally with male flowers in upper portion; bracts subtending spikes leaf-like, shorter than inflorescence; pistillate scales broadly ovate, usually shorter than perigynia; margins purplish to reddish brown; midribs green; short-awned; perigynia 8-30 per spike, usually in 6 rows, mostly overlapping, 3-sided, many-nerved, yellowish green to brownish; beaks minute, slightly bent.

Fruits:

Achenes, triangular, dark brown, 1-seeded; stigmas 3.

Habitat:

Open, dry or damp upland prairies and wet meadows, most abundant on limestone or chalk soils.

Distribution:

Principally east 1/2 of Kansas.

Comments:

Named for Samuel Barnum Mead, (1798-1880), a U.S. botanist and physician.

Mead's sedge