Introduction
When we walk out onto a lawn, into a field, or through a meadow, we encounter many plants that have a similar appearance. Most of the plants we'll walk through have longish stems and leaves that are considerably longer than they are wide. Depending on the season, some of the plants may have small (or even not-so-small) seed heads lazily waving at the top of the stem.
If you've bothered to think about the plants at all, you probably wondered at all the grass, were pleased that you didn't have to mow it all, and kept right on walking. In fact, though, unless the plants you were walking through were part of an intentional monoculture (a field of a single plant type planted by someone) you probably saw a variety of grasses, rushes and sedges. This unit is all about learning to tell the difference.
When you've completed this unit, you should be able to examine one of these common plants and tell whether it is a grass, a rush, or a sedge. Learning how to identify individual species within each classification is a subject for another set of units, since the group of species found in a given location can vary widely from those found in other areas.