© Charles T. BrysonThe grave of the gypsy queen Kelly Mitchell, where her visitors leave gifts. Botanists think her followers may also have introduced a foreign plant, called blue sedge, to Mississippi.
The plant doesn't look as if it had an unusual story to tell. A type of sedge, it tops out at a foot (0.3 meters) tall and has leaves that look just like blades of green grass.
But after this plant turned up in a Mississippi cemetery four years ago, botanists put on their detective hats to figure out how it got there. The
weedy species had never been found in North America before then.
Their main theory: Gypsies.
Cemetery sedgeCharles Bryson, a research botanist with the United States Department of Agriculture, recalls how he became involved in the mystery. In 2007, a graduate student named Lucas Majure came across an unknown type of sedge in Rose Hill Cemetery in the city of Meridian. He asked Bryson, who worked for the federal department's Agricultural Research Service, to help identify the plant.
"He showed it to me, and I immediately knew it was something new to science or something I had never seen in the U.S.," Bryson told LiveScience. "I have studied sedges for almost 40 years. I know them well enough to know if there is something different or unusual or new."
The plant turned out to be
Carex breviculmis, or blue sedge, a widespread weed found in Asia, Australia and New Zealand.