Reed (plant)






Reeds growing in saltmarsh in the estuary of the River Tay.


Reed is a common name for several tall, grass-like plants of wetlands.




Contents






  • 1 Varieties


  • 2 Use in construction


  • 3 Use in thatching


  • 4 Other uses


  • 5 See also


  • 6 External links





Varieties


They are all members of the order Poales (in the modern, expanded circumscription), and include:



In the Poaceae (grass) family




  • Common reed (Phragmites australis (Cav.) Trin. ex Steud.), the original species named reed

  • Giant reed (Arundo donax L.), used for making reeds for musical instruments

  • Burma reed (Neyraudia reynaudiana)

  • Reed canary-grass (Phalaris arundinacea)

  • Reed sweet-grass (Glyceria maxima)

  • Small-reed (Calamagrostis species)



In the Cyperaceae (sedge) family



  • Paper reed or papyrus (Cyperus papyrus), the source of the Ancient Egyptian writing material, also used for making boats


In the Typhaceae family




  • Bur-reed (Sparganium species)

  • Reed-mace (Typha species), also called bulrush or cattail



In the Restionaceae family




  • Cape thatching reed (Elegia tectorum), a restio originating from the South-western Cape, South Africa.

  • Thatching reed (Thamnochortus insignis), another restio species originating from the same geographic region.



Use in construction




A reed house under construction in the marshes of Iraq, 1978




Reed houses being built on a reed island in Lake Titicaca


Many cultures have used reeds in construction of buildings of various types.



Use in thatching


Main article: Thatching



A man in Germany thatching a roof using reeds


Phragmites australis, the common reed, is used in many areas for thatching roofs. In the United Kingdom, common reed used for this purpose is known as "Norfolk reed" or "water reed". However, "wheat reed" and "Devon reed" are not in fact reed at all, but long-stemmed wheat straw.



Other uses


Bamboo and, even more commonly, rattan stems are used as "reed sticks" to wick and disperse the scent of essential oils in aroma diffusers. (See Rattan#Food source and medicinal potential.)



See also



  • Bamboo

  • Constructed wetland

  • Rattan

  • Reed bed

  • Reed boat

  • Reed fields

  • Thatching



External links












-

Popular posts from this blog

Eastern Orthodox Church

Image
Not to be confused with Oriental Orthodoxy, Eastern Christianity, or Eastern Catholic Churches. "Eastern Orthodoxy", "Orthodox Church", "Orthodox Catholic Church", and "Orthodox Christian Church" redirect here. For other uses, see Orthodox (disambiguation). This article may be too long to read and navigate comfortably . The readable prose size is 132 kilobytes. Please consider splitting content into sub-articles, condensing it, or adding or removing subheadings. ( January 2018 ) Part of a series on the Eastern Orthodox Church Mosaic of Christ Pantocrator, Hagia Sophia Overview Structure Theology (History of theology) Liturgy Church history Holy Mysteries View of salvation View of Mary View of icons Background Crucifixion / Resurrection / Ascension of Jesus Christianity Christian Church Apostolic succession Four Marks of the Church Orthodoxy Organization Autocephaly Patriarchate ...
Read more

Zagreb

Image
This article is about the Croatian capital city. For other uses, see Zagreb (disambiguation). City in City of Zagreb, Croatia Zagreb City Grad Zagreb City of Zagreb Clockwise, from top: St. Mark's Square, Croatian State Archives, Zagreb Tram, Art Pavilion, Cibona & HOTO towers and Croatian National Theatre. Flag Coat of arms Zagreb Location of Zagreb in Croatia Show map of Croatia Zagreb Zagreb (Europe) Show map of Europe Coordinates: 45°49′N 15°59′E  /  45.817°N 15.983°E  / 45.817; 15.983 Coordinates: 45°49′N 15°59′E  /  45.817°N 15.983°E  / 45.817; 15.983 Country   Croatia County City of Zagreb RC diocese 1094 Free royal city 1242 Unified 1850 Subdivisions 17 city districts 218 local committees (70 settlements) Government  • Type Mayor-Council  • Mayor Milan Bandić (BM 365)  • City Assembly 51 members BM 365, ZL, NS-R (14) SDP, GLAS, HNS, HSS, NH-PS (13) ...
Read more

Understanding the information contained in the Deep Space Network XML data?

Image
up vote 1 down vote favorite NASA's Deep Space Network activity can be viewed conveniently at https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html but if you would like data in a more raw XML form, it can be accessed as described in this answer Below is a small Python script that reads the XML into a list of dictionaries, and saves it to disk as a JSON. The dictionaries are organized at the higher level by dish, then by spacecraft per dish. Question: What are the most-likely meanings of all the data field contained in the Deep Space Network XML data? This is the example url from the other answer, used in the script below: https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/data/1365107113.xml def dictify(r,root=True): # https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2148119/how-to-convert-an-xml-string-to-a-dictionary-in-python/30923963#30923963 if root: ret...
Read more