Rushes provide important habitat for waterfowl and other wildlife. They are sometimes grazed but are not as palatable as grasses to livestock. The family is well represented in wetlands of temperate and colder regions. Plants synoecious, monoecious or dioecious. Inflorescence of 1-many spikelets that are usually secondarily aggregated into racemes, spikes, heads or paniculiform to umbelliform clusters.
Flowers perfect or imperfect, regular or naked, individually subtended by bractlets.
Fruit an achene. Staminate and pistillate flowers may be borne in the same or different spikelets. The Cyperaceae includes species that are and have been used in a variety of ways. The flattened pith of Cyperus papyrus was used in ancient Egypt as the earliest version of paper. The stems of various sedges, including C. papyrus, can be bundled together to make rafts.