Fruit a capsule. The rushes possess little economic importance. Members of the family are rarely if ever used as ornamentals. The stems of some rushes are woven together to make baskets or mats. Rushes are generally not weedy but are very common in wet areas.
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.