The average person, upon first hearing of sedges, is likely to ask, not "Why are they interesting?" nor "What good are they?" but merely, "What are they?" The sedges are a large family of flowering plants, numbering altogether well over 3,000 species in the world. They are mainly plants of marshes or moist ground in temperate and subarctic regions. In Michigan, we have, in round numbers, 250 species, only two or three of which are not native to the state. The sedges are thus our largest family of native plants in Michigan, although when one includes the naturalized weeds and established escapes from cultivation, the daisy family (Compositae) slightly outnumbers them. (In the world flora, the Compositae are a very much larger family.)