e_ REEDS, No. 7.

Sedge is from the Anglo-Saxon Secg, and meant almost any waterside
plant. Thus we read of the Moor Secg, and the Red Secg, and the Sea
Holly (_Eryngium maritimum_) is called the Holly Sedge. And so it was
doubtless used by Shakespeare. In our day Sedge is confined to the genus
Carex, a family growing in almost all parts of the world, and containing
about 1000 species, of which we have fifty-eight in Great Britain; they
are most graceful ornaments both of our brooks and ditches; and some of
them will make handsome garden plants. One very handsome
species--perhaps the handsomest--is C. pendula, with long tassel-like
flower-spikes hanging down in a very beautiful form, which is not
uncommon as a wild plant, and can easily be grown in the garden, and
the flower-spikes will be found very handsome additions to tall
nosegays. There is another North American species, C. Fraseri, which is
a good plant for the north side of a rock-work: it is a small plant, but
the flower is a spike of the purest white, and is very curious, and
unlike any other flower.

SENNA.

_Macbeth._

What Rhubarb, Senna, or what purgative drug
Would scour these English hence?[277:1]

_Macbeth_, act v, sc. 3 (55).

Even in the time of Shakespeare several attempts were made to grow the
Senna in England, but without success; so that he probably only knew it
as an important "purgative drug." The Senna of commerce is made from the
leaves of Cassia lanceolata and Cassia Senna, both natives of Africa,
and so unfitted for open-air cultivation in England. The Cassias are a
large family, mostly with handsome yellow flowers, some of which are
very ornamental greenhouse plants; and one from North America, Cassia
Marylandica, may be considered hardy in the South of England.

FOOTNOTES:

[277:1] In this passage the old reading for "Senna" is "Cyme," and this
is the reading of the Globe Shakespeare; but I quote the passage with
"Senna" because it is so printed in many editions.

SPEARGRASS.

_Peto._

He persuaded us to do the like.

_Bardolph._

Yea, and to tickle our noses with Speargrass to make them
bleed, and then to beslubber our garments with it and swear
it was the blood of true men.

_1st Henry IV_, act ii, sc. 4 (339).

Except in this passage I can only find Speargrass mentioned in Lupton's
"Not