← Bedfellow

Low Woodland Sedge

Carex socialis

Low woodland sedge is aptly named twice over: it stays under eighteen inches, and it is social, running by rhizomes into broad soft colonies rather than standing as separate clumps. It grows in the moist bottomland woods and swamp forests of the lower Mississippi valley and the mid-South, in ground that floods in winter and dries only at the surface in summer. Its leaves are soft, narrow and a clear bright green, and enough of them persist through the cold months that a colony never looks bare. That combination — low, spreading, shade-tolerant, and green enough in winter to matter — makes it one of the easiest native groundcovers for damp shade, where it will knit a large area with almost no maintenance. Flowering is early and inconspicuous, slender spikes among the leaves in April, and there is no reason to cut it back. Sparrows and small mammals take the seed, and satyr caterpillars feed on the foliage.

Family

Cyperaceae

Type

grass

Lifespan

perennial

Height

0.5–1.5 ft

Spacing

1–1.5 ft apart

Light

sun, part shade

Soil moisture

wet, moist

Soil pH

acidic, neutral

Bloom

April, May

Bloom colors

yellow, green, brown

Wildlife value

songbirds, larval host, mammals

Landscape uses

border, groundcover, container, rain garden, erosion control, naturalizing

Native states

AL, AR, GA, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MO, MS, NC, OK, SC, TN, TX