Audubon® Native Gray's Sedge

Fun and wicked! Gray’s Sedge is a fascinating little plant that bears the weirdest fruiting structures—they’re puffy and prickly and look like medieval maces! These miniature “weapons” make for interesting additions to fresh or dried arrangements. Better yet, leave them on the plant, and let the birds enjoy the seeds. Game birds such as Ruffed Grouse, wild turkeys, and pheasants enjoy Sedge seeds, as do many songbirds, including Cardinals, Song Sparrows, Redpolls, and Painted Buntings. Ideal for pondside plantings (it loves constant moisture), Gray’s Sedge is also nice in lightly shaded beds and borders. A conversation starter!

Gray’s Sedge’s funny seedpods are not merely ornamental. The seed cases are filled with pockets of air so that they float. Gray’s Sedge often grows near water, and the buoyant pods allow the seeds to drift away and find new homes away from the mother plant. This reproduction strategy has been effective, enabling the species to establish a huge natural range that stretches from Minnesota to Massachusetts and south to Oklahoma and Florida. First identified in the 1800s, Gray’s Sedge was named for celebrated American botanist and Harvard professor, Asa Gray.

You wouldn’t think moths and butterflies would be interested in a plant without nectar-producing flowers, but Gray’s Sedge attracts some of these insects by another means. Its foliage serves as caterpillar food for Virginia ctenucha moths, American ear moths, Appalachian brown butterflies, eyed brown butterflies, and several skippers.