CYPERA'CFJE, or Catuct'NE,E, sometimes popularly called SEDGES, a natural order of plants, akin to grasses, but having generally a triangular stein, which is without joints, or almost so, and often leafless. The leaves arc sometimes sheathing, but their sheaths are always entire, not split, as in the grasses. The flowers, which are hermaphrodite in some, and unisexual in others, consist of a scale-like Blume, under which lie the organs of fructification, the pistils alone being frequently inclosed in a separate urn-shaped covering; the place of the perianth is sometimes sup plied by a few bristles. The stamens are 1 to 12 in number, the anthers erect: the ovary is one-seeded, the style single, trifid or bifid; the fruit a small crustaceous or bony nut, the embryo lenticular, and inclosed within the base of the albumen. Plants of this order, which contains fully 2000, known species, occur in all zones; some of the genera, as carer (q.v.), abounding in the colder, some, as cyperus (q.v.), iu the warmer parts of the
world. Many of them are plants of very humble growth, some, as bulrushes, papyrus, etc., comparatively large, but none rival in size rho bamboos and other gigantic grasses. Most of them grow in marshy and moist places, but a few in sunny dry places. Their stems and leaves are in general very deficient in succulence, and in most of them, also very rough, so that they are eaten by domesticated cattle only when in a very young state, and rather from necessity than from choice, mid are regarded by farmers as mere weeds. See CAREX, CYPEIGIS, and SUIRPUS. Some of the uses of plants of this order are noticed in the articles litnalusir, Co'rros-onAss, and PAPYRUS.