Sedge Buster - now spell-checked

Lesson 2

It bears repeating from lesson one that caric sedges with just two stigmas are flat, but not generally quiet as flat as these. For these depicted here are just a little bit immature and the achene (akene), if it was completely mature, would be a little fatter, or thicker and more rounded. So what we have here on the left is an achene. And on the right we have a peryginia. Akenes have to be dissected out of the peryginia before they look like this one. Note the little thingy sticking up on the top of the achene. That's where the style (base of the style) was attached before it fell off. Another name for the achene is ovary sort of. So if all the parts were attached you'd have two stigmas, then the style and its base, then the achene, from top to bottom. There's another achene in the peryginia next door. You just can't see it. Not the teeth on the beak of the achene. You can just barely make them out because they are transparent. Sometimes beaks are toothed, but sometimes they are toothless. Toofers or their absence can be an important key characteristic.

This picture shows two peryginias. The one on the left shows the ventral surface while the one on the right is dorsal side up. When you look at a spike from outside you only see the dorsal surface of the peryginias, or would if the pistallate scales weren't in the way. Another term for dorsal is abaxial which implies the back of the peryginia facing outward. The corresponding name for the ventral side is adaxial. See at the bottoms of the two peryginia? You can see were they were attached to the rachis (central stem) of the spike. Sometimes you have to look at both sides of the peryginia and count the veins. In this case, if the veins are there at all, they are very hard to see. That's on e of the reasons we think this is Carex austrina, cause C. austrina may not have any veins on the peryginia at all.