I have a small water garden, and in it I have a pot of papyrus…you know, the plant that the ancient Egyptians used to make paper. Anyway, my lawn is in fested with nut grass (a common lawn weed in the NE). Anyway, I was pulling these danged weeds, and I noticed how closely they resemble the papyrus…the flowering heads look exactly the same. Are these two plants of the same gennus? Can they hybridize? And…(i Have a sneaking suspicion of this)-is the papyrus in the pool actually propagating to my lawn? Nut grass is a pain in the ass to kill!
Common names are a bit useless when describing these things, but I’ll have a guess.
Nut grass in most places refers to Cyperus rotunda or one of the closely related species. The plant is now one of the most widespread on the planet. It’s a common flat sedge, with all the common flat sedge characteristics, including the flower heads.
Papyrus is Cyperus papyrus, another flat sedge. Same genus, diferent species, so fairly closely related. Not suprsingly very similar flower structure, but not the same plant.
Can they hybridize? Not AFAIK, but they are closely related so it’s possible.
Is the papyrus in the pool actually propagating to your lawn? Unlikley. Papyrus is a big plant. Nutgrass can get fairly big, maybe a foot or two tall, but nothing like a healthy papyrus plant, which will hit 10 feet in a good year and 5 feet in a bad one. I assume you mow your lawn, and I don’t think papyrus would tolerate being decapitatated that low, that regularly. Much more likely you just have nutgrass, almost everybody else in the world does.
Yes, nut grass is a pain in the ass to kill. Lots of rhizomes terminating in bulbs. Every bulb will regrow a new plant, and herbicides stop at the first bulb. Makes control almost impossible.