Carex hitchcockianaDewey

Hitchcock's sedge

WFO wfo-0000347494 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Carex hitchcockiana, photographed by Ryan Sorrells
fig. a Ryan Sorrells, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-12 / obs. 205836807
Carex hitchcockiana, photographed by Quinten Wiegersma
fig. b Quinten Wiegersma, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 135854622
Carex hitchcockiana, photographed by Quinten Wiegersma
fig. c Quinten Wiegersma, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 134699009
Carex hitchcockiana, photographed by Quinten Wiegersma
fig. d Quinten Wiegersma, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 77702437
Carex hitchcockiana, photographed by Reuven Martin
fig. e Reuven Martin, CC0 1.0 / obs. 78826726
Carex hitchcockiana, photographed by Scott Ward
fig. f Scott Ward, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 40535443
Carex hitchcockiana, photographed by aarongunnar
fig. g aarongunnar, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 19666505
Carex hitchcockiana, photographed by Daniel J. Layton
fig. h Daniel J. Layton, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 198430141

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
05150284
Filed as
Carex hitchcockiana Dewey
Det. by
R. F. C. Naczi 2025-01-01
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 27 botanical countries

Regions where Carex hitchcockiana is native: Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Ontario, Pennsylvania, Québec, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin AlabamaArkansasConnecticutIllinoisIndianaIowaKansasKentuckyMarylandMassachusettsMichiganMinnesotaMissouriNew JerseyNew YorkNorth CarolinaOhioOklahomaOntarioPennsylvaniaQuébecTennesseeVermontVirginiaWest VirginiaWisconsin District of Columbia
Native distribution of Carex hitchcockiana, 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
Alabama ALA NORTHERN AMERICA
Arkansas ARK
Connecticut CNT
District of Columbia WDC
Illinois ILL
Indiana INI
Iowa IOW
Kansas KAN
Kentucky KTY
Maryland MRY
Massachusetts MAS
Michigan MIC
Minnesota MIN
Missouri MSO
New Jersey NWJ
New York NWY
North Carolina NCA
Ohio OHI
Oklahoma OKL
Ontario ONT
Pennsylvania PEN
Québec QUE
Tennessee TEN
Vermont VER
Virginia VRG
West Virginia WVA
Wisconsin WIS

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 358 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -12.4 °C -9.1 °C -3.6 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 23.8 °C 25.8 °C 30.0 °C
Annual rainfall 866 mm 977 mm 1,213 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 130 mm 196 mm 248 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 358 research-grade observations of Carex hitchcockiana 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 5 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 hitchcockiana var. triflora Peck
  • Carex hitchcockii Eaton
  • Carex oligocarpa var. hitchcockiana (Dewey) Boeckeler
  • Carex oligocarpa var. hitchcockiana Kük.
  • Loxotrema hitchcockiana (Dewey) Raf.

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.