Carex limosa

Mud sedge ( Carex limosa )

The mud sedge ( Carex limosa ) is an entire Central European region ( Central Europe) and endangered building under decline sour grass greenhouse ( Cyperaceae ). It is a characteristic plant of wet depressions within Bult - bog complexes of rain and intermediate Moore. The Style epithet limosa has its origin in the Latin limosus, - a,-um = swampy and refers to the growing area of the plant.

The mud sedge is a perennial, overwintering green Hemikryptophyt with long creeping in the mud above-ground and underground runners ( stolons and rhizomes). The engine base is round and red to dark brown with yellow, matted roots, which form an extensive network. About 70 percent of the living plant mass is located in the ground.

The plant reaches heights of growth between 20 and 60 centimeters. The sharply triangular, less than 1 millimeter thick, slightly lined stems grow upright and are leafy only at the base. The lowest, triangular leaf sheaths are brown to reddish brown and shiny and lattice annoying. The vaginal orifice emarginate. The anterior vaginal wall is white, very thin-skinned, limp and disintegrates very easily einreißend. The obtuse to acute ligule are about 2 to 4 millimeters long and white. The gray-green to blue- green, at the top of very harsh and extended in a very long borstlich overgrown peak leaf blades are stiff, rinnig folded up, with V- shaped cross-section and often bristly folded or knickrandigen leaf margins. You can reach about 1 to 1.5 times to 3 millimeters wide and about 50 centimeters in length. The lowest husk of inflorescences is to subulate deciduous leaf-like and shorter than the inflorescence.

The heyday of the mud sedge extends from April to June. The inflorescence is 3-6 inches long and consists of two to three stalked spikelets. The terminal spikelet is male. Among them are one to two apart standing, long -stalked and overhanging female spikelets. The husks are red - brown to black or green. The approximately 4 mm long, short- beaked fruit hoses are compressed elliptical and lens-shaped in cross-section and three indistinct edges. The ovaries are dreinarbig. The sedge fruchtet July to August.

Illustration

Husks, fruit hoses, fruit

Distribution, location and ecology

The mud sedge is native to the northern hemisphere in most of Europe, northern Asia and North America. It grows in the swamps and bogs of the boreal ecozone and in high rainfall mountainous areas with rain bog growth.

The mud sedge is a full light plant and can not tolerate shade. Your ecological focus is on wet, flat temporarily flooded, loamy, poor nutrient-rich and acidic Torfschlammböden. So you took to its growth places - the tree - and shrub -free, non drying up high and intermediate marsh and bog quaking and silting areas of nutrient-poor and huminsäurereicher ( dystrophic ) waters.

The sedge is considered ice age relic and usually grows with peat mosses ( Sphagnum) Cuspidatum the group together. She is a member of the small cultivator Riede in peat bog and the Kennart the plant community of the peat moss mud harrows Ried ( Caricetum limosae ) within the Association of peatland hollows ( Rhynchosporion ). Here it grows together with the White beak-sedge ( Rhynchospora alba), the brown beak-sedge ( Rhynchospora fusca ), bladder sedge ( Scheuchzeria palustris), Rundblättrigem Sundew ( Drosera rotundifolia ), Middle Sundew ( Drosera intermedia), marsh Weichorchis ( Hammarbya paludosa ) bog club moss ( Lycopodiella inundata ), treacherous peat moss (Sphagnum fallax ), sphagnum squarrosum and others.

Pollination of flowers carried by the wind. The diasporas are especially spread by wind, water or sticking in the fur of animals in the plumage of birds. The vegetative propagation via long in the mud creeping stolon.

Threats and conservation

In areas with intact bogs rain the mud sedge is an integral and ungefährdeter part of the vegetation. But in the European flat and hilly country it is a very strong returning type, although the world safely, but when characterizing plant growing Moore is valuable and worthy of protection. The sources of risk are to be found in the destruction of their habitats, drainage and afforestation of peatlands, the mining of peat, the entering and driving the sensitive habitats as well as the cultivation of peatlands. As part of the general bog conservation and the regulations pursuant to the Habitats Directives Moore are protected habitats. In Germany, the plant is on the Red List of endangered plants as endangered ( category 2).