Carex ferrugineaScop.

WFO wfo-0000346534 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 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 ferruginea, photographed by hecklemore
fig. a hecklemore, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-07-15 / obs. 143719800
Carex ferruginea, photographed by Wolfgang Jauch
fig. b Wolfgang Jauch, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 137889613
Carex ferruginea, photographed by Wolfgang Jauch
fig. c Wolfgang Jauch, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 137889592
Carex ferruginea, photographed by Wolfgang Jauch
fig. d Wolfgang Jauch, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 137889608
Carex ferruginea, photographed by Wolfgang Jauch
fig. e Wolfgang Jauch, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 137889617
Carex ferruginea, photographed by Étienne Léveillé-Bourret
fig. f Étienne Léveillé-Bourret, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 82631618
Carex ferruginea, photographed by Étienne Léveillé-Bourret
fig. g Étienne Léveillé-Bourret, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 82631624
Carex ferruginea, photographed by hecklemore
fig. h hecklemore, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 143719822

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
05180266
Filed as
Carex ferruginea Scop.
Det. by
not recorded on this sheet
Collected
not recorded
Origin
not recorded
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 10 botanical countries

Regions where Carex ferruginea is native: Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, NW. Balkan Pen., Romania, Switzerland AlbaniaAustriaBulgariaFranceGermanyGreeceItalyNW. Balkan Pen.RomaniaSwitzerland
Native distribution of Carex ferruginea, 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
Germany GER
Greece GRC
Italy ITA
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Romania ROM
Switzerland SWI

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 49 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -17.5 °C -13.0 °C -7.5 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 12.6 °C 15.1 °C 18.9 °C
Annual rainfall 1,335 mm 1,944 mm 3,138 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 177 mm 345 mm 562 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 49 research-grade observations of Carex ferruginea 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 30 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 alpigena A.Kern. ex Dalla Torre
  • Carex brachyrhyncha Gsaller
  • Carex brevifolia Host
  • Carex cristata Clairv.
  • Carex ferruginea f. angustifolia Beck
  • Carex ferruginea f. capillarioides Murr
  • Carex ferruginea f. crassispica Kük.
  • Carex ferruginea f. latifolia Beck
  • Carex ferruginea f. leiocarpa Beck
  • Carex ferruginea f. spadicea W.D.J.Koch
  • Carex ferruginea f. tenerrima (Murr & Appel) Kük.
  • Carex ferruginea f. transiens Kük.
  • Carex ferruginea subsp. ferruginea
  • Carex ferruginea subsp. kerneri (Kohts) K.Richt.
  • Carex ferruginea var. alpigena (A.Kern. ex Dalla Torre) Nyman
  • Carex ferruginea var. kerneri (Kohts) K.Richt.
  • Carex ferruginea var. spadicea W.D.J.Koch
  • Carex frigida Vill.
  • Carex gracillima Steud. & Hochst.
  • Carex kerneri Kohts
  • Carex mielichhoferi Schkuhr
  • Carex nana Lam.
  • Carex rigida Schrank
  • Carex scopoliana Willd.

and 6 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.