Carex cumulata(L.H.Bailey) Mack.

clustered sedge

WFO wfo-0000345808 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 4 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 4 times, 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 cumulata, photographed by Quinten Wiegersma
fig. a Quinten Wiegersma, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-08-16 / obs. 151260211
Carex cumulata, photographed by Reuven Martin
fig. b Reuven Martin, CC0 1.0 / obs. 84757192
Carex cumulata, photographed by bobkennedy
fig. c bobkennedy, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 155398161
Carex cumulata, photographed by Quinten Wiegersma
fig. d Quinten Wiegersma, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 151260243
Carex cumulata, photographed by Reuven Martin
fig. e Reuven Martin, CC0 1.0 / obs. 84757200
Carex cumulata, photographed by bobkennedy
fig. f bobkennedy, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 155398128
Carex cumulata, photographed by John Kees
fig. g John Kees, CC0 1.0 / obs. 137811024
Carex cumulata, photographed by John Kees
fig. h John Kees, CC0 1.0 / obs. 137811175

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
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
02312131
Filed as
Carex cumulata (L.H.Bailey) Fernald
Det. by
A. A. Reznicek 2012-01-01
Collected
G. J. Pierce 1970-08-09
Origin
US
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 21 botanical countries

Regions where Carex cumulata is native: Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Labrador, Maine, Manitoba, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Brunswick, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Pennsylvania, Prince Edward I., Québec, Rhode I., Vermont, Wisconsin ConnecticutIllinoisIndianaLabradorMaineManitobaMassachusettsMichiganNew BrunswickNew HampshireNew JerseyNew YorkNewfoundlandNova ScotiaOntarioPennsylvaniaPrince Edward I.QuébecVermontWisconsin Rhode I.
Native distribution of Carex cumulata, 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
Connecticut CNT NORTHERN AMERICA
Illinois ILL
Indiana INI
Labrador LAB
Maine MAI
Manitoba MAN
Massachusetts MAS
Michigan MIC
New Brunswick NBR
New Hampshire NWH
New Jersey NWJ
New York NWY
Newfoundland NFL
Nova Scotia NSC
Ontario ONT
Pennsylvania PEN
Prince Edward I. PEI
Québec QUE
Rhode I. RHO
Vermont VER
Wisconsin WIS

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 225 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -13.7 °C -11.1 °C -5.7 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 17.8 °C 24.6 °C 27.4 °C
Annual rainfall 862 mm 1,054 mm 1,646 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 80 mm 202 mm 338 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 225 research-grade observations of Carex cumulata 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.

  • Carex albolutescens var. cumulata (L.H.Bailey) L.H.Bailey
  • Carex cumulata f. cumulata
  • Carex cumulata f. soluta Fernald
  • Carex straminea var. cumulata L.H.Bailey

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. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. 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.