Tan. Brown, Taupe. Earth. Beige. We can also throw in chestnut, cocoa, mahogany, copper, burnt umber, milk chocolate and even bittersweet. The list of earth toned colors is so extensive that between color experts and charts, the estimate for the names of recognized shades and tints of brown is between 100 and 130. And not one of them mentions “sedge.” We know this because we did a word search on several of the most popular lists including the Pantone Matching System, the RAL Color System – and even Crayola and Art Supplies. Sedge isn’t on any of them.

So where (and why) did early Chesapeake Bay Retriever fanciers come up with ‘sedge’ as an accepted color for the breed?

We ask because “why” is our favorite question on these pages, and often, the answer is that early fanciers used terms with which they were familiar, and that they knew to be accurate to describe their breed.

To be clear, everyone can understand that Chessies had to be the color of their environment in which they hunted to better blend with the marshes, shoreline, and wetlands of the Chesapeake Bay; It makes sense that brown, dark brown, dark deadgrass, deadgrass, light brown, light deadgrass and tan are the breed’s registerable colors. But sedge? Why sedge. What IS a sedge, anyway?

In botanical terms, a “sedge” is a grass-like plant from the family Cyperaceae commonly found in the marshes and wetlands of the Chesapeake area which includes tidal and non-tidal wetlands. The vegetation dominated by grasses, water-loving plant – and yes, sedges, plants that often turn reddish or rust-colored, especially in autumn, and blend perfectly with the landscape. And for readers with an interest in botany, sedges are different from true grasses because they have solid, often triangular stems and leaves arranged in three ranks; grasses have hollow stems and leaves in two ranks. More to the point, this was (is) the environment in which hunters work alongside their Chesapeake Bay Retrievers. By naming a breed color “sedge,” the Chessie’s camouflage ties in directly – and quite specifically – to the natural hues of the ecosystem. No other color quite describes a color in Chessies that has reddish hues, spanning from light strawberry-blond through bright red to deep mahogany or chestnut.

After all this, you might get a chuckle from a scene from the classic movie, Mr. Blandings Build His Dream House starring Cary Grant, Myrna Loy and Melvin Douglas:

We conclude with a bit of trivia. Did you know that the AKC registered its first Chessie, named Sunday, in 1878? Or that the American Chesapeake Club was founded in 1918 and held its first retriever trial in 1932?

Image:  Portrait of a Sedge Chesapeake Bay Retriever by Kerrie T/ Shutterstock