Carex curvulaAll.

WFO wfo-0000345842 Accepted WFO 2026-06 7 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–g · 3 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 3 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 curvula, photographed by Jason Grant
fig. a Jason Grant, CC BY 4.0 / 2020-09-03 / obs. 93321215
Carex curvula, photographed by Christian Berg
fig. b Christian Berg, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 81626186
Carex curvula, photographed by Olivier Argagnon
fig. c Olivier Argagnon, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 58627739
Carex curvula, photographed by Christian Berg
fig. d Christian Berg, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 81626283
Carex curvula, photographed by Olivier Argagnon
fig. e Olivier Argagnon, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 58627732
Carex curvula, photographed by Christian Berg
fig. f Christian Berg, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 81626378
Carex curvula, photographed by Olivier Argagnon
fig. g Olivier Argagnon, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 58627741

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 27242
Filed as
Carex curvula All.
Det. by
not recorded on this sheet
Collected
ex herb. J. Gay
Origin
CH
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. 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 10 botanical countries

Regions where Carex curvula is native: Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, France, Italy, NW. Balkan Pen., Romania, Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine AlbaniaAustriaBulgariaFranceItalyNW. Balkan Pen.RomaniaSpainSwitzerlandUkraine
Native distribution of Carex curvula, 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
Albania ALB EUROPE
Austria AUT
Bulgaria BUL
France FRA
Italy ITA
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Romania ROM
Spain SPA
Switzerland SWI
Ukraine UKR

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 141 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -20.0 °C -16.0 °C -12.7 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 10.1 °C 12.7 °C 14.8 °C
Annual rainfall 1,322 mm 1,709 mm 2,418 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 175 mm 254 mm 472 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 141 research-grade observations of Carex curvula 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 18 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 curvula f. elongata Husn.
  • Carex curvula f. orbelica (Velen.) Kük.
  • Carex curvula f. pallida Asch. & Graebn.
  • Carex curvula f. pygmaea Holler ex Asch. & Graebn.
  • Carex curvula f. rodnensis Porcius ex Asch. & Graebn.
  • Carex curvula prol. rodnensis (Porcius) Rouy
  • Carex curvula subsp. mirabilis Arcang.
  • Carex curvula var. major Gaudin
  • Carex curvula var. mirabilis (Arcang.) Nyman
  • Carex curvula var. rodnensis Porcius
  • Carex lobata Bellardi
  • Carex orbelica Velen.
  • Carex ovata C.A.Mey.
  • Carex rodnensis (Porcius ex Asch. & Graebn.) Rouy
  • Carex rosae (Gilomen) Holub
  • Caricina curvula (All.) St.-Lag.
  • Cryptoglochin curvulus (All.) Heuff.
  • Kobresia curvula (All.) N.A.Ivanova

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.