Sedge field:
We paddled up to this field of vegetation, brown because of the
lateness of the season.
I listened as my TNC guides warned me that the field was actually a floating sedge mat that was unstable
and sometimes treacherous to walk upon. I
decided it would have sounded snotty to tell them that I knew all about these mats, as I
have been on sedge and Sphagnum mats at dozens of sites in the USA.
Also, if I had said anything like that, I would have been damning myself to plunge into a pool, and then look like
an idiot.
Most of the brown plants in this photograph are native sedges. The larger, yellowish grasses are
Phragmites australis, a non-native, aggressive, invasive species. The area in this photograph is
responding well to Phragmites control work--in the background, just in front of the trees, you can see
the unbroken ranks of Phragmites that had not been worked on.
If uncontrolled, the Phragmites would dominate the fen, and displace many of the twenty-one
rare plant species found there, including a few that are carnivorous.
