Sedge Buster Lesson 13 - Carex leptalea

This one gets a private lesson, cause it's so cute. But besides being cute, its unusual in that it is the only Carex in Texas that has a solitary spikelet per culm. Well, truth to tell, there is one other one. C. typhina, but this is the only one that has one spikelet and trigonous achenes. The first few times I ran across this sedge, I had lotsa trouble recognizing it as a Carex. That's probably why we have six sheets of it in the CB herbarium. Look at that picture nearby. See how diminutive it is. Those culms are so wiry. Yikes. No wonder I kept thinking it was a grass or a flatsedge or a beak rush. Goodness gracious.

And that one poor little solitary spike per culm, as can be seen in this, perhaps adjacent photograph, is androgynous. That is, those two little weasly spikelets on top, distally, are the males and the bigger, nicer looking ones below are the females. With great difficulty, I, Crumby dissected out one achene. It is there also somewhere in the same picture, maybe.

It would be nice to be androgynous. Had I been androgynous, back when I was in the early years of Druid training, and extremely wicked, back then, when I was told to go lala myself, as I often was instructed to do in those days, I could have, right then and there. That would have been lotsa fun. But alas, there's no use crying over spilt milk.

Then too, I always become nostalgic when left alone. Perhaps that's why I chose C. leptalea, with its solitary spike and wiry culm for tonight's lesson. For all the humans and proto humans have gone off on important duties and left me here to look after the pets and livestock and to do all my chores, and their chores as well. But then too, I chose it because it is unusual, and cute.

Ecologically speaking, C. leptalea is a bog hopper, and generally confined to the eastern counties of Texas.