Plate 1 figs. a–h · 6 observations
This species has been photographed under an open licence only 6 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.
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 32 botanical countries
| Region | TDWG code | Continent |
|---|---|---|
| Austria | AUT | EUROPE |
| Baltic States | BLT | |
| Belarus | BLR | |
| Belgium | BGM | |
| Central European Russia | RUC | |
| Czechia-Slovakia | CZE | |
| Denmark | DEN | |
| East European Russia | RUE | |
| Finland | FIN | |
| Føroyar | FOR | |
| France | FRA | |
| Germany | GER | |
| Great Britain | GRB | |
| Iceland | ICE | |
| Ireland | IRE | |
| 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 | |
| Svalbard | SVA | |
| Sweden | SWE | |
| Switzerland | SWI | |
| Ukraine | UKR | |
| Altay | ALT | ASIA-TEMPERATE |
| West Siberia | WSB | |
| Yakutiya | YAK |
Not drawn on the map: Great Britain. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is 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 203 observations
| Condition | 5th percentile | Median | 95th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coldest month, mean daily low | -24.6 °C | -10.8 °C | -0.2 °C |
| Warmest month, mean daily high | 14.0 °C | 19.8 °C | 22.5 °C |
| Annual rainfall | 608 mm | 762 mm | 1,790 mm |
| Rainfall in the driest quarter | 95 mm | 128 mm | 313 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 203 research-grade observations of Carex dioica 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 27 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 casteriana Heer ex Boott
- Carex chlamydea Norman
- Carex custoriana Heer
- Carex dioica f. isogyna (Fr.) Neuman
- Carex dioica f. laxa Junge
- Carex dioica f. metteniana (O.Lang) Asch.
- Carex dioica subsp. custoriana (Heer) K.Richt.
- Carex dioica subsp. isogyna (Fr.) K.Richt.
- Carex dioica subsp. paralleloides N.Lund. ex Andersson
- Carex dioica var. androgyna Gray
- Carex dioica var. custoriana (Heer) Nyman
- Carex dioica var. elongata Gray
- Carex dioica var. isogyna Fr.
- Carex dioica var. metteniana O.Lang
- Carex dioica var. scabrella Fr.
- Carex dioica var. subcaespitosa O.Lang
- Carex dioiscostrongyla St.-Lag.
- Carex laevis Hoppe
- Carex linnaeana Host
- Carex linnaei Degl.
- Carex metteniana (O.Lang) C.B.Lehm. ex Schur
- Carex nigricans Dewey
- Caricinella laevis (Heuff.) St.-Lag.
- Maukschia laevis Heuff.
and 3 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.