Carex alopecuroidesD.Don ex Tilloch & Taylor

WFO wfo-0000344322 Accepted WFO 2026-06 6 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–f · 1 observation

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 1 time, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Carex alopecuroides, photographed by Jacy Chen
fig. a Jacy Chen, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-08 / obs. 196160269
Carex alopecuroides, photographed by Jacy Chen
fig. b Jacy Chen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 196160066
Carex alopecuroides, photographed by Jacy Chen
fig. c Jacy Chen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 196160192
Carex alopecuroides, photographed by Jacy Chen
fig. d Jacy Chen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 196160001
Carex alopecuroides, photographed by Jacy Chen
fig. e Jacy Chen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 196160139
Carex alopecuroides, photographed by Jacy Chen
fig. f Jacy Chen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 196160084

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.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Accession
K000999180
Filed as
Carex alopecuroides D.Don
Det. by
Clarke, C.B.
Collected
Don, D.
Origin
NP
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 14 botanical countries

Regions where Carex alopecuroides is native: China South-Central, China Southeast, Taiwan, Assam, East Himalaya, Jawa, Myanmar, Nepal, New Guinea, Philippines, Sulawesi, Sumatera, Vietnam, West Himalaya China South-CentralChina SoutheastTaiwanAssamEast HimalayaJawaMyanmarNepalNew GuineaPhilippinesSulawesiSumateraVietnamWest Himalaya
Native distribution of Carex alopecuroides, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Assam ASS ASIA-TROPICAL
East Himalaya EHM
Jawa JAW
Myanmar MYA
Nepal NEP
New Guinea NWG
Philippines PHI
Sulawesi SUL
Sumatera SUM
Vietnam VIE
West Himalaya WHM
China South-Central CHC ASIA-TEMPERATE
China Southeast CHS
Taiwan TAI

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Where it actually grows measured, from 31 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -0.4 °C 2.1 °C 5.9 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 16.4 °C 19.2 °C 23.5 °C
Annual rainfall 2,992 mm 3,627 mm 4,605 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 152 mm 248 mm 554 mm

It is found where winters bring light 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 31 research-grade observations of Carex alopecuroides 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 8 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.

  • Carex alopecuroides D.Don
  • Carex consocialis Steud.
  • Carex emodorum Spreng.
  • Carex hayatana Honda
  • Carex japonica var. alopecuroides (D.Don) C.B.Clarke
  • Carex kawakamii Hayata
  • Carex pseudojaponica Hayata
  • Carex scabrisacca Ohwi & D.Ryu

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

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.