Carex pilulifera

Carex pilulifera, the pill sedge,[2] is a European species of sedge found in acid heaths, woods and grassland from Macaronesia to Scandinavia. It grows up to 30 cm (12 in) tall, with 2–4 female spikes and 1 male spike in an inflorescence. These stalks bend as the seeds ripen, and the seeds are collected and dispersed by ants of the species Myrmica ruginodis.

Carex pilulifera
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae
Clade: Tracheophytes
Clade: Angiosperms
Clade: Monocots
Clade: Commelinids
Order: Poales
Family: Cyperaceae
Genus: Carex
Subgenus: Carex subg. Carex
Section: Carex sect. Acrocystis
Species:
C. pilulifera
Binomial name
Carex pilulifera
Synonyms [1]

Carex oederi Retz.

Description

The culms of Carex pilulifera grow to a length of 8–30 centimetres (3–12 in), and are often noticeably curved.[3] The leaves are 5–20 cm (2–8 in) long and 1.5–2.0 millimetres (0.06–0.08 in) wide, and are fairly flat.[3] The rhizomes of C. pilulifera are very short, giving the plant a caespitose (densely tufted) appearance.[3] The tussock grows outwards through the production of annual side-shoots.[4]

The inflorescence comprises a single, terminal, male (staminate) spike, and 2–4 lateral female (pistillate) spikes.[3] The spikes are clustered together, and the whole inflorescence is 1–4 cm (0.4–1.6 in) long.[3] The female spikes are 4–8 mm (0.16–0.31 in) long, ovoid or approaching spherical,[3] and contains 5–15 flowers.[4] The female spikes are attached directly to the stem, and each is subtended by a bract which does not form a sheath.[3] The male spike is 8–15 mm (0.3–0.6 in) long and much narrower.[3]

Distribution and ecology

Carex pilulifera has a wide distribution in Europe, extending from Macaronesia and the Balkan Peninsula to Scandinavia.[1] It grows on acidic substrates including heathland, grassland and woodland.[4] It typically inhabits soils with a pH of 4.5–6.0.[3]

As the seeds of C. pilulifera ripen, the culms bend, and can eventually touch the ground.[4] The seeds are then dispersed by ants, particularly Myrmica ruginodis,[4] in a process known as myrmecochory, and are eaten by other insects, such as the ground beetle Harpalus fuliginosus.[4]

Taxonomic history

Carex pilulifera was described by Carl Linnaeus in his 1753 work Species Plantarum, which marks the starting point of botanical nomenclature.[1] The specific epithet pilulifera means "bearing small globular structures", in reference to the female spikes.[5]

gollark: I wanted something to play varying music in my base, so I made this.https://pastebin.com/SPyr8jrh is the CC bit, which automatically loads random tapes from a connected chest into the connected tape drive and plays a random track. The "random track" bit works by using an 8KiB block of metadata at the start of the tape.Because I did not want to muck around with handling files bigger than CC could handle within CC, "tape images" are generated with this: https://pastebin.com/kX8k7xYZ. It requires `ffmpeg` to be available and `LionRay.jar` in the working directory, and takes one command line argument, the directory to load to tape. It expects a directory of tracks in any ffmpeg-compatible audio format with the filename `[artist] - [track].[filetype extension]` (this is editable if you particularly care), and outputs one file in the working directory, `tape.bin`. Please make sure this actually fits on your tape.I also wrote this really simple program to write a file from the internet™️ to tape: https://pastebin.com/LW9RFpmY. You can use this to write a tape image to tape.EDIT with today's updates: the internet→tape writer now actually checks if the tape is big enough, and the shuffling algorithm now actually takes into account tapes with different numbers of tracks properly, as well as reducing the frequency of a track after it's already been played recently.
gollark: https://pastebin.com/pDNfjk30Tired of communicating fast? Want to talk over a pair of redstone lines at 10 baud? Then this is definitely not perfect, but does work for that!Use `set rx_side [whatever]` and `set tx_side [whatever]` on each computer to set which side of the computer they should receive/transmit on.
gollark: https://pastebin.com/Gu2rVXL9PotatoPass, the simple, somewhat secure password system which will *definitely not* install potatOS on your computer.Usage instructions:1. save to startup or somewhere else it will be run on boot2. reboot3. run `setpassword` (if your shell does not support aliases, run it directly)4. set your password5. reboot and enjoy your useless password screen
gollark: https://pastebin.com/MWE6N15i```fixcrane```It's kind of like harbor, but designed as a bundler thing to pack code and libraries into a single file. Automatically minifies your code, and will compress it if that would shorten it - the output file will use a single-file VFS like harbor.
gollark: <@184468521042968577> You know, a structure of ```lua{ ["a/b/c"] = "hugeblank's bad code"}```would be better for writes and stuff but worse for listing.Also, you can convert paths to a "canonical form" with `fs.combine(path, "") `.

References

  1. A. O. Chater (2010). "Carex". In T. G. Tutin; V. H. Heywood; N. A. Burges; D. A. Webb; I. B. K. Richardson (eds.). Alismataceae to Orchidaceae. Flora Europaea. 5. Cambridge University Press. pp. 290–323. ISBN 978-0-521-15370-6.
  2. "BSBI List 2007". Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland. Archived from the original (xls) on 2015-01-25. Retrieved 2014-10-17.
  3. A. C. Jermy; D. A. Simpson; M. J. Y. Foley; M. S. Porter (2007). "Carex pilulifera L.". Sedges of the British Isles. BSBI Handbook No. 1 (3rd ed.). Botanical Society of the British Isles. pp. 431–433. ISBN 978-0-901158-35-2.
  4. Gösta Kjellsson (1985). "Seed fate in a population of Carex pilulifera L. I. Seed dispersal and ant-seed mutualism". Oecologia. 67 (3): 416–423. doi:10.1007/BF00384949. JSTOR 4217752.
  5. "Pillerstarr, Carex pilulifera L." Den virtuella floran (in Swedish). Naturhistoriska riksmuseet. July 28, 2010. Retrieved July 25, 2011.
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