Updated project metadata. There are numerous examples in plants, where certain organs or developmental stages are desiccation tolerant and can withstand extended periods of severe water loss. One prime example are seeds and pollen of many spermatophytes. However, in some plants, also vegetative organs can be desiccation tolerant as for example the tubers of yellow nutsedge (Cyperus esculentus) that also store larger amounts of lipids similar to seeds. Interestingly, the closest relative purple nutsedge (Cyperus rotundus) generates tubers that do not accumulate oil and are not desiccation tolerant. We generated nanoLC-MS/MS-based proteomes of yellow nutsedge in five replicates of four stages of tuber development and compared them to the proteomes of roots and leaves, yielding 2257 distinct protein groups. Our data reveal a striking upregulation of hallmark proteins of seeds in the tubers. A deeper comparison to the tuber proteome of the closest relative purple nutsedge (Cyperus rotundus) and a previously published proteome of Arabidopsis seeds and seedlings indicates that indeed a seed-like proteome was found in yellow but not purple nutsedge. This was further supported by an analysis of the proteome of a lipid-droplet enriched fraction of yellow nutsedge, which also displayed seed-like characteristics. One reason for the differences between the two nutsedge species might be the expression of certain transcription factors homolog to ABSCISIC ACID INSENSITIVE3, WRINKLED1 and LEAFY COTYLEDON1 that drive gene expression in Arabidopsis seed embryos.