 
Cyperus-like Sedge?Saturday 10th June 2000
 
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.
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.
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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.
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.