Pale Sedge - Carex pallescens

Description

Very distinctive with bright green to yellow green leaves and pale, straw-coloured, egg shaped, beakless fruits. It is tufted with very short rhizomes and stems from 20 to 60 cm tall.

Identification difficulty
Recording advice

A good image of the fruiting head showing details of individual fruits. Ideally an image showing the leaves or a comment describing the colour.

Habitat

Marshes, heathland and occasionally woodland.

When to see it

Fruiting June and July.

Life History

Perennial.

UK Status

Widespread but local in Britain.

VC55 Status

Occasional and local in our area where it is mainly confined to the Charnwood Forest area.  In the Flora of Leicestershire (Primavesi and Evans 1988) is is recorded in 15 of the 617 tetrads.

It was on the 2011 VC55 Rare Plant Register (Jeeves, 2011) but improved recording since then has meant it is found in more sites than previously thought, so it doesn't meet the criteria for the current RPR (Hall and Woodward, 2022)

 

Leicestershire & Rutland Map

MAP KEY:

Yellow squares = NBN records (all known data)
Coloured circles = NatureSpot records: 2020+ | 2015-2019 | pre-2015

UK Map

Species profile

Common names
Pale Sedge
Species group:
Grasses, Rushes & Sedges
Kingdom:
Plantae
Order:
Poales
Family:
Cyperaceae
Records on NatureSpot:
5
First record:
05/07/2013 (Nicholls, David)
Last record:
07/07/2023 (Nicholls, David)

Total records by month

% of records within its species group

10km squares with records

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