MOTHER'S DAY GIFT: FLOWERING SEDGE

Happy Mother's Day to mothers everywhere!

When we arrived at the cabin a few days ago, I was looking forward to seeing which plants were flowering in the yard. And I found a few. This white flower is bloodroot. My bloodroot must have tagged along with a clump of wild ginger that I transplanted a few years ago from my brother-in-law's yard.

Bloodroot

And below is the wild ginger, which is also flowering right now. The pink flowers are low to the ground and easy to miss.

Wild Ginger

But I was most eager to see whether the oak sedge (Carex pensylvanica) was flowering. And it definitely is. This time of year, it’s easiest to distinguish the sedge from the grasses I usually yank (like fescue and crab grass) because of the way it flowers.  

Oak Sedge (Carex pensylvanica)

Those wispy yellow tops (a highly technical botanical term) are actually the flower. I rarely think of grasses and sedges as flowering plants, but they are. And these flowering tops are pretty distinctive. I've become a sedge fan and I'm starting to see them everywhere. It's like when you buy a red car, you start seeing red cars everywhere.

​Five years ago, I learned about oak sedge from Cheryl Clemens, who once served as a native plants consultant for Burnett County (not sure if she still does). Cheryl visited us – free of charge – after we had torn down our old cabin and built new. Our yard was a great big sand pit after all the excavation work. The sight of it was a little daunting. We worried that one thunderstorm would send our real estate downhill into our neighbor’s yard. They were probably worried too.
 
Cheryl advised us how to start our native plants experiment. She first told us about oak sedge, which is becoming a no-mow lawn substitute around the country.
​ https://www.bbg.org/gardening/article/sedge_lawns
She pointed it out to me in the woods and I was pretty embarrassed that I’d never paid much attention to this little native grass growing everywhere. In Burnett County, it grows mostly in the woods, but it can tolerate full sun as well.
 
This is what an oak sedge lawn is capable of looking like (the photo is from the Minnesota Wildflowers website):

That's what I'm shooting for -- we're a long way from that.

Oh, well. But every year, it spreads, and it’s tough as nails. The deer don’t eat it and the harsh conditions here – cold winters and droughty, sandy, nutrient-poor soil – don’t faze it. But one thing I’ve learned about planting natives: the mix of plants changes a little bit every year. And if our wild-strawberry patches outcompete the oak sedge, I’m good with that!
 
Here’s more info on oak sedge:
 
https://www.prairiemoon.com/carex-pensylvanica-pennsylvania-sedge-prairie-moon-nursery.html
​