Bushcraft Quick Tips - How To Tell A Sedge From A Grass (And Why)

Description

http://paulkirtley.co.uk for more wilderness bushcraft, outdoor skills, advice and information.

In this video I show how to tell the difference between a sedge and a grass. There is an important reason why and it is to do with ergot poisoning, or ergotism. Watch the video to find out more...

I hope you find this useful!

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Tags: sedge,grass,bushcraft,survival,ergot,ergotism,camping,outdoors,wild foods,bushcraftquicktips,poisoning,toxins,fungi

Video Transcription

hi there I'm Paul Kurtley welcome to my quick tip series now many people would think this is a grass and it's actually a sedge and I'm going to show you today how to tell the difference and there's an important reason why the reason why is many wild grasses are prone to our got infection and forgot is a very small fungus which grows on the seed heads and that can cause poisoning it can cause hallucinations and it can cause in sufficient quantity it can cause death and the lots of nasty side effects to it as well and it has been the cause of poisonings in the past and also relatively recently and so we want to be able to make sure that if we get a grassy seed head like this that we can tell the difference whether this is a sedge or whether it's a grass and the advantage of knowing it's a sedge is that with one exception is once edge which grows in Australia and which is prone to her got with that exception the other sedges all the others are not prone to her got poisoning as far as we know so if you know you've got a sedge you know you're safe from her got poisoning in in general and the way that we tell the difference is by looking at the cross section of the stem grasses have round stems to feel round in your hand if you roll them in your finger they'll feel round with said jeez I've got triangular stems they roll them in your hand they'll feel like they've got three sides and three corners and if you take a cut with a knife look at the cross section it will look triangular so I hope that serves you well I hope you find that useful and it certainly helps differentiate between grasses and sedges if you've enjoyed this please go across to my blog Paul curtly co uk where you'll find much more information on wild foods and other aspects of bushcraft and survival so thanks for watching and I'll see you on the next quick tip video