CAREX, a genus of plants belonging to the natural order Cyper near, and the tribe Caricece. The flowers are diclinous, arranged in imbricated spikes, each covered by a glume ; the female flowers have a single urceolate persistent perigone, in which the nut is completely inclosed ; one style with two or three stigmas ; the male flowers have three stamens without a perianth. The species for the most part are inconspicuous and unattractive plants. They are however exceedingly numerous. Lindley, in Loudon's Encyclopedia of Plants,' describes 105 species, and this is probably not more than half that are now known. Babington describes 66 species as natives of Great Britain, being the largest number of species of any genus of phmnogamous plants iu this country. Koch, in the 'Flora Ger manica,' describes 103 species as natives of Germany and Switzerland Although so numerous, they serve directly few of the purposes of man or the higher animals. Their leaves are tough and hard, so that none of them are eaten by cattle except in cases of great necessity. They are for the most part inhabitants of wet and swampy grounds, in bogs, fens, and marshes, in the temperate and northern parts of the world. In the hop-grounds of Great Britain the leaves of some of the species are used for tying the blues of the hope to the poles. In Italy they are used for placing between the staves of wine-casks, are woven over Florence flasks, and occasionally employed for making chair-bottoms. The leaves of the Carex sylvatica, according to Liunmus, aro combed and dressed, and used as a warm lining for gloves and shoes ; and thus protected, the Laplanders seldom suffer from being frost-bitten.
C. arenaria has a place in some of the continental Pharmacopoeias; its root-stock being a reputed diaphoretic and diuretic. It is used
under the name of German Sarsaparilla, and is employed in cases of skin-disease, as well as in secondary syphilis.
The C. hirta and C. disticha are often substituted fraudulently or by mistake for it, but do not, according to Bischoff, possess such active properties. It is not known to the practitioners in medicine of this country.
C. arenaria grows on the sands of the sea-shore, and is one of the plants which, in conjunction with the Elymus, Arundo, and Psamma, binds the loose sands, and forms them into solid embankments. Although most of the species are devoid of striking beauty, some of serpentarius), remarks that this resemblance vanishes upon a closer inspection, and that, if it be permitted to form any judgment from the forms solely, it would seem probable that the skeleton of the eariema, which was not known when he wrote, ought to have some relationship them when in flower are much admired on account of the elegant drooping of their panicles of golden-coloured flowers. This is the case with C. ragota and C. Franeri. Unattractive as the mass of these plants are to the general observer, they have been carefully studied by botanists, and Willdenow, Goodenough, Wahlenberg, Sckuhr, Scopoll, Boott, Babington, and.S. Gibson have done much to throw light upon this obscure genus. Their importance in nature however must not be estimated by their appearance or their utility to man. They frequently form the only vegetation of the swamp, and by their existence and decay they gradually form n soil, on which plants more immediately useful to man may be grown.