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.
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 28 botanical countries
| Region | TDWG code | Continent |
|---|---|---|
| Alabama | ALA | NORTHERN AMERICA |
| Arkansas | ARK | |
| Connecticut | CNT | |
| Delaware | DEL | |
| District of Columbia | WDC | |
| Florida | FLA | |
| Georgia | GEO | |
| Illinois | ILL | |
| Indiana | INI | |
| Kentucky | KTY | |
| Maryland | MRY | |
| Massachusetts | MAS | |
| Michigan | MIC | |
| Mississippi | MSI | |
| Missouri | MSO | |
| New Hampshire | NWH | |
| New Jersey | NWJ | |
| New York | NWY | |
| North Carolina | NCA | |
| Ohio | OHI | |
| Oklahoma | OKL | |
| Ontario | ONT | |
| Pennsylvania | PEN | |
| South Carolina | SCA | |
| Tennessee | TEN | |
| Vermont | VER | |
| Virginia | VRG | |
| West Virginia | WVA |
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 175 observations
| Condition | 5th percentile | Median | 95th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coldest month, mean daily low | -8.8 °C | -6.9 °C | -0.3 °C |
| Warmest month, mean daily high | 25.5 °C | 27.4 °C | 31.1 °C |
| Annual rainfall | 895 mm | 1,008 mm | 1,347 mm |
| Rainfall in the driest quarter | 156 mm | 188 mm | 271 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 175 research-grade observations of Carex gracilescens 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 1 synonym
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 laxiflora var. gracillima Boott
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.
- USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol CAGR8. public domain. 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.