This is an interesting flower. The plant seems to have sprouted a bouquet of golden bottle brushes. I’ve seen people cut these for use in fresh flower arrangements and marvel at the delicate beauty of the bloom. Others label the plant as a weed and spend hours trying to evict it from their gardens.
Yellow Nutsedge,
Cyperus esculentus, is a native plant that takes advantage of habitat created for its use by man’s activities. Nutgrass is another commonly used name that deceives people into believing this sedge is some type of grass. Long narrow leaves mean grass to most people and they don’t care to know the difference.
The sign of a sedge is the three sided arrangement of the leaves. Stems will have three flat sides. I’ve always found the symmetry of a sedge plant to be something wondrous.
Nutsedge is a tremendously rapid colonizer of suitable space. The root mass is thick with rhizomes that grow in all directions, sending up new plants everywhere. The best growing medium for this plant is disturbed ground such as found in plowed farm fields or tilled gardens. This is one of the plants that isn’t concerned with a healthy soil structure or ecosystem. Anything that makes it easier to push rhizomes through the soil is beneficial to the nutsedge. Because of this, it is a persistent resident of most gardens and disturbed areas.
The key to successful nutsedge persistence is the development of dozens of tubers on the rhizomes. These tubers are like tiny potatoes and stay in the ground over the winter to begin a new crop in the spring. Pulling of the plant causes the tubers to detach and remain in the soil, making it nearly impossible for predators, including gardening humans, to do the population any permanent damage.
Being a native plant, it has a host of insects and other animals that look to it as a food source. These beetles were intensely interested in the blooming flowers. I’ve known voles to tear nutsedge areas to pieces looking for winter tubers.
This is an interesting flower. The plant seems to have sprouted a bouquet of golden bottle brushes. I’ve seen people cut these for use in fresh flower arrangements and marvel at the delicate beauty of the bloom. Others label the plant as a weed and spend hours trying to evict it from their gardens.
Yellow Nutsedge, Cyperus esculentus, is a native plant that takes advantage of habitat created for its use by man’s activities. Nutgrass is another commonly used name that deceives people into believing this sedge is some type of grass. Long narrow leaves mean grass to most people and they don’t care to know the difference.
The sign of a sedge is the three sided arrangement of the leaves. Stems will have three flat sides. I’ve always found the symmetry of a sedge plant to be something wondrous.
Nutsedge is a tremendously rapid colonizer of suitable space. The root mass is thick with rhizomes that grow in all directions, sending up new plants everywhere. The best growing medium for this plant is disturbed ground such as found in plowed farm fields or tilled gardens. This is one of the plants that isn’t concerned with a healthy soil structure or ecosystem. Anything that makes it easier to push rhizomes through the soil is beneficial to the nutsedge. Because of this, it is a persistent resident of most gardens and disturbed areas.
The key to successful nutsedge persistence is the development of dozens of tubers on the rhizomes. These tubers are like tiny potatoes and stay in the ground over the winter to begin a new crop in the spring. Pulling of the plant causes the tubers to detach and remain in the soil, making it nearly impossible for predators, including gardening humans, to do the population any permanent damage.
Being a native plant, it has a host of insects and other animals that look to it as a food source. These beetles were intensely interested in the blooming flowers. I’ve known voles to tear nutsedge areas to pieces looking for winter tubers.
