Carex gayanaDesv.

WFO wfo-0000346944 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 5 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 5 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 gayana, photographed by Aira Francisca Faúndez Fallau
fig. a Aira Francisca Faúndez Fallau, CC BY 4.0 / 2020-02-20 / obs. 61899286
Carex gayana, photographed by Aira Francisca Faúndez Fallau
fig. b Aira Francisca Faúndez Fallau, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 60915482
Carex gayana, photographed by Aira Francisca Faúndez Fallau
fig. c Aira Francisca Faúndez Fallau, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 60917737
Carex gayana, photographed by Matt Berger
fig. d Matt Berger, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 58074633
Carex gayana, photographed by Santiago Martín-Bravo
fig. e Santiago Martín-Bravo, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 109540987
Carex gayana, photographed by Aira Francisca Faúndez Fallau
fig. f Aira Francisca Faúndez Fallau, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 61899290
Carex gayana, photographed by Aira Francisca Faúndez Fallau
fig. g Aira Francisca Faúndez Fallau, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 60917761
Carex gayana, photographed by Aira Francisca Faúndez Fallau
fig. h Aira Francisca Faúndez Fallau, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 60915498

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 2055946
Filed as
Carex gayana Desv.
Det. by
Jimnéz-Mejias, Pedro, (UPOS), Universidad Pablo de Olavide (SPAIN)
Collected
H. O. Sleumer
Origin
AR
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 8 botanical countries

Regions where Carex gayana is native: Argentina Northeast, Argentina Northwest, Argentina South, Bolivia, Chile Central, Chile North, Chile South, Peru Argentina NortheastArgentina NorthwestArgentina SouthBoliviaChile CentralChile NorthChile SouthPeru
Native distribution of Carex gayana, 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
Argentina Northeast AGE SOUTHERN AMERICA
Argentina Northwest AGW
Argentina South AGS
Bolivia BOL
Chile Central CLC
Chile North CLN
Chile South CLS
Peru PER

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 37 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -12.8 °C -6.6 °C -1.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 11.4 °C 13.8 °C 21.9 °C
Annual rainfall 406 mm 1,050 mm 3,500 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 36 mm 86 mm 455 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 37 research-grade observations of Carex gayana 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 10 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 diclina Phil.
  • Carex gayana var. densa Kük.
  • Carex gayana var. gayana
  • Carex gayana var. rufa Kük.
  • Carex gayana var. schedonautos (Steud.) Kük.
  • Carex gayana var. taurina (Phil.) Kük.
  • Carex nitens Phil.
  • Carex schedonautos Steud.
  • Carex schenodautos Steud.
  • Carex taurina Phil.

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.