Discover
Identify
Record
Common Sedge - Carex nigra
Carex nigra has rhizomes, normally far creeping, producing at intervals shoots in small or large tufts. Stems are 7 to 70 cm tall, rough, slender and three sided, and bear leaves normally 1 to 3 mm wide, flat, tapered to fine points, glaucous and mostly erect. Inflorescence has leaf like bracts, the lowest about as long as the inflorescence. Female spikelets 1 to 4, wide, close together and usually stalkless. Glumes are oblong to oval, usually blunt, black with green midrib, the fruit is, wider than the glume, faint ribbed and often with a purple tinge and almost no beak. Male spike purplish brown.
Very short peduncle.
Inflorescence has upright habit.
Two stigmas.
Wet places, marshes, bogs, wet ditches etc.
Fruiting June to August.
Perennial.
Widespread and quite common in Britain.
Fairly frequent in Leicestershire and Rutland. In the 1979 Flora survey of Leicestershire it was found in 73 of the 617 tetrads.
Leicestershire & Rutland Map
Enter a town or village to see local records
MAP KEY:
Yellow squares = NBN records (all known data)
Coloured circles = NatureSpot records: 2020+ | 2015-2019 | pre-2015
UK Map
Species profile
- Common names
- Common Sedge
- Species group:
- Grasses, Rushes & Sedges
- Kingdom:
- Plantae
- Order:
- Poales
- Family:
- Cyperaceae
- Records on NatureSpot:
- 10
- First record:
- 15/06/2013 (Nicholls, David)
- Last record:
- 19/09/2022 (Nicholls, David)
Total records by month
% of records within its species group
10km squares with records
The latest images and records displayed below include those awaiting verification checks so we cannot guarantee that every identification is correct. Once accepted, the record displays a green tick.
In the Latest Records section, click on the header to sort A-Z, and again to sort Z-A. Use the header boxes to filter the list.