Wild West Yorkshire nature diary
pond snail frog

Cyperus-like Sedge?

Saturday 10th June 2000
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seedhead of kingcup MUCH AS I APPRECIATE the odd grey day, it's good to have a real summer's day at last. I sit by the pond for my coffee break and notice that the Kingcup seedheads, which reminded me of a jester's hat, have opened to produce something like a little hollowed out, upside-down starfish.

cyperus like sedge There's a small sedge growing amongst the kingcups at the water's edge. One of its flowerheads sticks up, like a narrow bottle-brush, the other two hang down. Hold the stem between your thumb and finger and you'll find that it is triangular in section.

From the choice of species given in The Observer's Book of Grasses, Sedges and Rushes, I'd say that it was a small specimen of the Cyperus-like Sedge, Carex pseudocyperus. The drooping spikelets are the female flowers, the upright one is the male.

bat In the evening a bat, a Pipistrelle, hawks at rooftop level going to a fro over the mown grass in front of a row of bungalows.

Richard Bell
Richard Bell,
wildlife illustrator

E-mail; 'richard@daelnet.co.uk'

  
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