Plant Guide > Grasses > Wood Rush

Wood Rush

Wood RushTHE WOOD-RUSH. (Luzula)

While searching for the earliest hepatica or arbutus the soft, reddish green leaves of the Common Wood-rush (Luzula campestris) are often seen.

This rush is one of our earliest flowering plants, and appears while the turf still remains brown from winter's frosts.

Common Wood-rush grows in tiny tufts and is found in many locations from dry, open woodlands to low marshes, and through all the summer months the plant remains noticeable as its ripening seeds bend the slender stems earthward with increasing weight.

There is seldom a rocky pasture that does not show a few of the reddish umbels spreading from the low growth that so universally surrounds each firmly embedded stone, while a favourite location is near the borders of open woods, where later the Pennsylvania Sedge carpets the ground beneath white birches and low-growing oaks.

When the flat, rather broad leaves first appear they are sparingly fringed with silky white hairs. The plant is rarely more than a foot in height and the blossoming umbel is composed of short branches which bear small, densely flowered spikes.

Hairy Wood Rush