Atrichum selwynii (Selwyn's atrichum moss)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Atrichum selwynii, photographed by Randal — fig. a Randal, CC0 1.0 / 2021-02-07 / obs. 112386088

Atrichum selwynii, photographed by zookanthos — fig. c zookanthos, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 54284106

Atrichum selwynii, photographed by Tom — fig. e Tom, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 3843796

Atrichum selwynii, photographed by Ken-ichi Ueda — fig. f Ken-ichi Ueda, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 2715100

Atrichum selwynii, photographed by Don Loarie — fig. h Don Loarie, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 64044

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Where it actually grows measured, from 152 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	-9.1 °C	3.3 °C	8.2 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	17.6 °C	22.8 °C	28.7 °C
Annual rainfall	504 mm	1,148 mm	3,231 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	6 mm	81 mm	315 mm

It is found where winters bring hard frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 152 research-grade observations of Atrichum selwynii that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.

Also published as 4 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

Atrichum rosulatum Müll.Hal. & Kindb.
Atrichum undulatum var. selwynii (Austin) Frye
Catharinea rosulata (Müll.Hal. & Kindb.) Kindb.
Catharinea selwynii (Austin) E.Britton

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite. It has no native range either: Kew's checklist does not cover this taxon.