Carex elata

Carex elata All.                  

Tufted-sedge

Status: not scarce

This is a plant of ditches, lake- and river-sides and reed-swamps, in eutrophic conditions. It often forms extensive stands, and usually in places subject to seasonal flooding. In East Anglian reedswamps its common associates are C. acutiformis, C. riparia, Cladium mariscus and Phragmites australis.

Being a tussock-forming plant without leading rhizomes, reproduction is presumably entirely by seed. Like other members of this group of sedges it often fails to flower or set seed if water levels or other habitat factors are not right.

This perennial species has suffered from wetland drainage, and some sites are probably still vulnerable to drainage and to widening and deepening of ditches. However, many sites for C. elata are of great conservation interest and are nature reserves or designated as SSSIs and current populations seem stable.

C. elata is widespread in Europe although absent from the arctic and much of the boreal zone and very are in the Mediterranean region. It is scattered across Asia to Manchuria. Eastern populations have been distinguished as subsp. omskiana (Meinsh.) Jalas.

Because of confusion with tussock forms of C. nigra and with partially fertile hybrids with this and other members of the section Phacocystis, the exact distribution of the species requires further investigation.

R. W. David