On a recent trip to long island, at the very beginning of spring I was treated to a still sleeping forest with very little grown vegetation. An exception were of course the Skunk cabbage, and these small sedges.
I had no knowledge of what a sedge actually looks like. Sedges is a family of monocots, grass-like flowering plants with over 5,500 known species, the largest belong the genus of Carex (true-sedges) comprising of over 2000 species.
Like grass, identifying a sedge species can be tough, I spent a good chunk of time looking at other images of similar species, like the Vernal Sedge to be pretty sure that what I documented was the common Pennsylvania Sedge. The Pennsylvania sedge is a perennial sedge that grows across north American, primarily Canada and Eastern US. The leaves can grow to two feet, this particular clump was observed in early spring.
The sedge spreads primarily vegetatively, spreading via Rhizomes. It grows in shady dry forests commonly found near oak trees.
It flowers through mid April to June. The flower cluster comprises of a single spike with a slender staminate (male) spike above one to three shorter pistillate (female) spikes each with 4 to 12 florets.
Pollination occurs by wind, a casual flick of a spike yields a plume of pollen. You can see some of the pollens that landed back on the spike after I gave it a little flick.
What's growing in the Garden State 