Carex filicinaNees

WFO wfo-0000346584 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 7 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 7 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 filicina, photographed by Jacy Chen
fig. a Jacy Chen, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-11-21 / obs. 170428145
Carex filicina, photographed by Cheng-Tao Lin
fig. b Cheng-Tao Lin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 24224855
Carex filicina, photographed by Cheng-Tao Lin
fig. c Cheng-Tao Lin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 24227434
Carex filicina, photographed by Cheng-Tao Lin
fig. d Cheng-Tao Lin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 24231678
Carex filicina, photographed by Cheng-Tao Lin
fig. e Cheng-Tao Lin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 24168246
Carex filicina, photographed by Cheng-Te Hsu
fig. f Cheng-Te Hsu, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 23112364
Carex filicina, photographed by Jacy Chen
fig. g Jacy Chen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 170428150
Carex filicina, photographed by 胡正恆(Jackson Hu)
fig. h 胡正恆(Jackson Hu), CC BY 4.0 / obs. 50811112

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 27 botanical countries

Regions where Carex filicina is native: China South-Central, China Southeast, Hainan, Taiwan, Tibet, Assam, Bangladesh, Borneo, Christmas I., Cocos (Keeling) Is., East Himalaya, India, Jawa, Laos, Lesser Sunda Is., Malaya, Maluku, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Sulawesi, Sumatera, Thailand, Vietnam, West Himalaya China South-CentralChina SoutheastHainanTaiwanTibetAssamBangladeshBorneoEast HimalayaIndiaJawaLaosLesser Sunda Is.MalayaMalukuMyanmarNepalPakistanPhilippinesSri LankaSulawesiSumateraThailandVietnamWest Himalaya Christmas I.
Native distribution of Carex filicina, 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
Assam ASS ASIA-TROPICAL
Bangladesh BAN
Borneo BOR
Christmas I. XMS
Cocos (Keeling) Is. CKI
East Himalaya EHM
India IND
Jawa JAW
Laos LAO
Lesser Sunda Is. LSI
Malaya MLY
Maluku MOL
Myanmar MYA
Nepal NEP
Pakistan PAK
Philippines PHI
Sri Lanka SRL
Sulawesi SUL
Sumatera SUM
Thailand THA
Vietnam VIE
West Himalaya WHM
China South-Central CHC ASIA-TEMPERATE
China Southeast CHS
Hainan CHH
Taiwan TAI
Tibet CHT

Not drawn on the map: Cocos (Keeling) Is.. 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 201 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -0.7 °C 4.4 °C 11.0 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 16.5 °C 22.0 °C 27.6 °C
Annual rainfall 2,983 mm 4,111 mm 5,114 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 119 mm 308 mm 880 mm

It is found where winters bring light 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 201 research-grade observations of Carex filicina 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 caricina (D.Don) Ghildyal & U.C.Bhattach.
  • Carex caricina var. glaucina (Boeckeler) Ghildyal & U.C.Bhattach.
  • Carex caricina var. leptocarpa (C.B.Clarke) Ghildyal & U.C.Bhattach.
  • Carex caricina var. leptocarpus (Clarke) Ghildyal & U.C.Bhattach.
  • Carex caricina var. microgyna (C.B.Clarke) Karth.
  • Carex caricina var. minor Ghildyal & U.C.Bhattach.
  • Carex ceylanica var. saturata (C.B.Clarke) Kük.
  • Carex filicina f. depauperata Kük.
  • Carex filicina subsp. pseudofilicina (Hayata) T.Koyama
  • Carex filicina var. ciliata Kuntze
  • Carex filicina var. glaucina (Boeckeler) Kük.
  • Carex filicina var. hirta Kuntze
  • Carex filicina var. laevis Kuntze
  • Carex filicina var. laucina (Boeckeler) Kük.
  • Carex filicina var. leptocarpa (C.B.Clarke) Kük.
  • Carex filicina var. meiogyna (Nees) Strachey
  • Carex filicina var. microgyna C.B.Clarke
  • Carex filicina var. saturata (C.B.Clarke) Kük.
  • Carex filicina var. subdensa F.T.Wang & Tang
  • Carex glaucina Boeckeler
  • Carex leptocarpa C.B.Clarke
  • Carex leptocarpus C.B.Clarke
  • Carex meiogyna Nees
  • Carex neoguineensis C.B.Clarke

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.