Carex cespitosaL.

WFO wfo-0000345434 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Carex cespitosa, photographed by Марина Садыкова
fig. a Марина Садыкова, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-12 / obs. 205700568
Carex cespitosa, photographed by Aleksei Baushev
fig. b Aleksei Baushev, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205245532
Carex cespitosa, photographed by Татьяна Горбушина
fig. c Татьяна Горбушина, CC0 1.0 / obs. 204427699
Carex cespitosa, photographed by Алексей Ябс
fig. d Алексей Ябс, CC0 1.0 / obs. 202474180
Carex cespitosa, photographed by Aleksei Baushev
fig. e Aleksei Baushev, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200547155
Carex cespitosa, photographed by Эльмира
fig. f Эльмира, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 197778698
Carex cespitosa, photographed by Эльмира
fig. g Эльмира, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 197778682
Carex cespitosa, photographed by Valentin Kosterin
fig. h Valentin Kosterin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 196251013

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
Smithsonian, US National Herbarium
Accession
US 31253
Filed as
Carex cespitosa L.
Det. by
Strong, Mark T., (BOT), Smithsonian Institution - National Museum of Natural History (UNITED STATES)
Collected
Schott, --
Origin
DE
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC0 1.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. We link to the digitised sheet rather than rehosting it, because the holding institutions do not serve their images to third parties reliably and we are not going to show you a picture we cannot actually deliver. 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 sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 49 botanical countries

Regions where Carex cespitosa is native: Altay, Amur, Inner Mongolia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Khabarovsk, Korea, Krasnoyarsk, Kuril Is., Magadan, Manchuria, Mongolia, North Caucasus, Primorye, Qinghai, Sakhalin, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, Turkmenistan, West Siberia, Xinjiang, Yakutiya, Albania, Austria, Baltic States, Belarus, Bulgaria, Central European Russia, Czechia-Slovakia, Denmark, East European Russia, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, North European Russia, Northwest European Russia, Norway, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Romania, South European Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine AltayAmurInner MongoliaJapanKazakhstanKhabarovskKrasnoyarskMagadanManchuriaMongoliaNorth CaucasusPrimoryeQinghaiSakhalinTranscaucasusTürkiyeTurkmenistanWest SiberiaXinjiangYakutiyaAlbaniaAustriaBaltic StatesBelarusBulgariaCentral European RussiaCzechia-SlovakiaDenmarkEast European RussiaFinlandFranceGermanyHungaryItalyNetherlandsNorth European RussiaNorthwest European RussiaNorwayNW. Balkan Pen.PolandRomaniaSouth European RussiaSpainSwedenSwitzerlandUkraine Korea
Native distribution of Carex cespitosa, 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. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Albania ALB EUROPE
Austria AUT
Baltic States BLT
Belarus BLR
Bulgaria BUL
Central European Russia RUC
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
Denmark DEN
East European Russia RUE
Finland FIN
France FRA
Germany GER
Great Britain GRB
Hungary HUN
Italy ITA
Netherlands NET
North European Russia RUN
Northwest European Russia RUW
Norway NOR
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Romania ROM
South European Russia RUS
Spain SPA
Sweden SWE
Switzerland SWI
Ukraine UKR
Altay ALT ASIA-TEMPERATE
Amur AMU
Inner Mongolia CHI
Japan JAP
Kazakhstan KAZ
Khabarovsk KHA
Korea KOR
Krasnoyarsk KRA
Kuril Is. KUR
Magadan MAG
Manchuria CHM
Mongolia MON
North Caucasus NCS
Primorye PRM
Qinghai CHQ
Sakhalin SAK
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR
Turkmenistan TKM
West Siberia WSB
Xinjiang CHX
Yakutiya YAK

Not drawn on the map: Kuril Is., Great Britain. 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.

Flowering 55 in flower of 66 examined

Peak flowering in May. Each bar is the share of Carex cespitosa observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 55 of 66 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 9 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Where it actually grows measured, from 1,275 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -21.8 °C -10.9 °C -4.6 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 20.6 °C 22.8 °C 24.8 °C
Annual rainfall 463 mm 653 mm 808 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 57 mm 103 mm 130 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 1,275 research-grade observations of Carex cespitosa 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. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 59 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 alpestris Lam.
  • Carex caespitosa f. retorta Sylven
  • Carex caespitosa var. inumbrata K.Eichw.
  • Carex cespitosa f. acutiuscula Lackow.
  • Carex cespitosa f. major (Peterm.) Kük.
  • Carex cespitosa f. polystachya Peterm.
  • Carex cespitosa f. retorta (Fr.) Sylvén
  • Carex cespitosa subsp. minuta (Franch.) Vorosch.
  • Carex cespitosa var. alpina (Schur) Kük.
  • Carex cespitosa var. elongata Ohwi
  • Carex cespitosa var. filifolia Boott
  • Carex cespitosa var. hyalinosquamis Akiyama
  • Carex cespitosa var. latifolia Uechtr. ex Asch. & Graebn.
  • Carex cespitosa var. minuta (Franch.) Kük.
  • Carex cespitosa var. multifibrillosa Kük.
  • Carex cespitosa var. multiflora Neuman
  • Carex cespitosa var. retorta Fr.
  • Carex cespitosa var. retorta Boott
  • Carex cespitosa var. rubra (H.Lév. & Vaniot) H.Lév.
  • Carex cespitosa var. spreta (Steud.) Nyman
  • Carex cespitosa var. strictiformis Almq.
  • Carex cespitosa var. strictissima Kük.
  • Carex cespitosa var. waisbeckeri Kük.
  • Carex drejeri O.Lang

and 35 more.

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.