Carex hirtaL.

Hairy Sedgehairy sedgehammer sedge

WFO wfo-0000347452 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Carex hirta, photographed by Поляков Александр
fig. a Поляков Александр, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-13 / obs. 205804947
Carex hirta, photographed by Aleksei Baushev
fig. b Aleksei Baushev, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205242863
Carex hirta, photographed by Aleksei Baushev
fig. c Aleksei Baushev, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205245480
Carex hirta, photographed by Aleksei Baushev
fig. d Aleksei Baushev, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205247509
Carex hirta, photographed by Aleksei Baushev
fig. e Aleksei Baushev, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205238258
Carex hirta, photographed by Jason Grant
fig. f Jason Grant, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204452918
Carex hirta, photographed by Aleksei Baushev
fig. g Aleksei Baushev, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203320638
Carex hirta, photographed by Yann Kemper
fig. h Yann Kemper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 202656988

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 2163386
Filed as
Carex hirta L.
Det. by
Strong, M. T.; Simmons, R. H.
Collected
E. C. Leonard 1918-05-13
Origin
US
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. We link to the digitised sheet rather than rehosting it, because the holding institutions do not serve their images to third parties reliably and we are not going to show you a picture we cannot actually deliver. 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 sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 38 botanical countries

Regions where Carex hirta is native: Morocco, Iran, North Caucasus, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, Albania, Austria, Baltic States, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Central European Russia, Corse, Czechia-Slovakia, Denmark, East European Russia, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Krym, Netherlands, North European Russia, Northwest European Russia, Norway, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Portugal, Romania, South European Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine MoroccoIranNorth CaucasusTranscaucasusTürkiyeAlbaniaAustriaBaltic StatesBelarusBelgiumBulgariaCentral European RussiaCorseCzechia-SlovakiaDenmarkEast European RussiaFinlandFranceGermanyGreeceHungaryIrelandItalyKrymNetherlandsNorth European RussiaNorthwest European RussiaNorwayNW. Balkan Pen.PolandPortugalRomaniaSouth European RussiaSpainSwedenSwitzerlandUkraine
Native distribution of Carex hirta, 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
Baltic States BLT
Belarus BLR
Belgium BGM
Bulgaria BUL
Central European Russia RUC
Corse COR
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
Denmark DEN
East European Russia RUE
Finland FIN
France FRA
Germany GER
Great Britain GRB
Greece GRC
Hungary HUN
Ireland IRE
Italy ITA
Krym KRY
Netherlands NET
North European Russia RUN
Northwest European Russia RUW
Norway NOR
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Portugal POR
Romania ROM
South European Russia RUS
Spain SPA
Sweden SWE
Switzerland SWI
Ukraine UKR
Iran IRN ASIA-TEMPERATE
North Caucasus NCS
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR
Morocco MOR AFRICA

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.

Flowering 190 in flower of 304 examined

Peak flowering in May. Each bar is the share of Carex hirta observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 190 of 304 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 7 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Where it actually grows measured, from 2,038 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -12.4 °C -7.9 °C 1.8 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 19.9 °C 23.2 °C 26.0 °C
Annual rainfall 542 mm 675 mm 1,161 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 89 mm 111 mm 213 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 2,038 research-grade observations of Carex hirta 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. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 33 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 hirta f. glabrata Peterm.
  • Carex hirta f. hirsutissima Podp.
  • Carex hirta f. hirtiformis (Pers.) Kunth
  • Carex hirta f. latifolia Waisb. ex Kük.
  • Carex hirta f. major Peterm.
  • Carex hirta f. paludosa A.Winkl. ex Asch. & Graebn.
  • Carex hirta f. pseudohirta Schur
  • Carex hirta f. spinosa H.Mort.
  • Carex hirta f. subhirtiformis Kneuck.
  • Carex hirta f. villosa Peterm.
  • Carex hirta subsp. hirtiformis K.Richt.
  • Carex hirta var. aquatica Waisb.
  • Carex hirta var. fuscescentes Lej.
  • Carex hirta var. glabra Gaudin
  • Carex hirta var. glabrata Boenn.
  • Carex hirta var. glabrescens Cariot
  • Carex hirta var. hirtiformis (Pers.) Mérat
  • Carex hirta var. hirtiformis (Pers.) Lej.
  • Carex hirta var. hirtiformis-aquatica Lej.
  • Carex hirta var. hirtiformis-terrestris Lej.
  • Carex hirta var. humilis Peterm.
  • Carex hirta var. pilosa Čelak.
  • Carex hirta var. pusilla Merino
  • Carex hirta var. repens F.Nyl.

and 9 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. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. 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.