Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations
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.
Native range 113 botanical countries
Not drawn on the map: Great Britain, Aleutian Is.. We hold no public-domain boundary for these regions, so they are listed rather than guessed at.
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 1,971 observations
| Condition | 5th percentile | Median | 95th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coldest month, mean daily low | -23.3 °C | -11.2 °C | -1.5 °C |
| Warmest month, mean daily high | 15.4 °C | 22.2 °C | 26.1 °C |
| Annual rainfall | 539 mm | 851 mm | 1,807 mm |
| Rainfall in the driest quarter | 65 mm | 135 mm | 324 mm |
It is found where winters are severely cold. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,971 research-grade observations of Carex canescens 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 Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.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 50 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 badia Pers.
- Carex breutelii Schnizl. ex Lange
- Carex brizoides Huds.
- Carex canescens f. fulvescens Holmb.
- Carex canescens f. subsubulosa (Norman) Toivonen
- Carex canescens subsp. persoonii (O.Lang) K.Richt.
- Carex canescens var. alpicola Kurtz
- Carex canescens var. bracteata Klett & Richt.
- Carex canescens var. brunnea Macoun
- Carex canescens var. canescens
- Carex canescens var. congesta Domin
- Carex canescens var. curta (Gooden.) Macloskie
- Carex canescens var. disjuncta Fernald
- Carex canescens var. dubia Kük.
- Carex canescens var. fallax Kurtz
- Carex canescens var. fallax Kurtz ex Kük.
- Carex canescens var. gracillima Schur
- Carex canescens var. heterostachya Farw.
- Carex canescens var. laetevirens Asch.
- Carex canescens var. longibracteata Porcius
- Carex canescens var. robusta Blytt
- Carex canescens var. robustina Macoun
- Carex canescens var. subelongata Laest.
- Carex canescens var. submuricata Laest.
and 26 more.
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.
- 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.