Carex lucorumWilld. ex Link

Blue Ridge sedge

WFO wfo-0001301615 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Carex lucorum, photographed by Quinten Wiegersma
fig. a Quinten Wiegersma, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-24 / obs. 201341187
Carex lucorum, photographed by Quinten Wiegersma
fig. b Quinten Wiegersma, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201341295
Carex lucorum, photographed by Quinten Wiegersma
fig. c Quinten Wiegersma, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 140668320
Carex lucorum, photographed by Quinten Wiegersma
fig. d Quinten Wiegersma, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 83543004
Carex lucorum, photographed by botanygirl
fig. e botanygirl, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 387256
Carex lucorum, photographed by Henrique Pacheco
fig. f Henrique Pacheco, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205000250
Carex lucorum, photographed by John Baur
fig. g John Baur, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 130324743
Carex lucorum, photographed by botanygirl
fig. h botanygirl, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 387188

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
11200
Filed as
Carex lucorum var. austrolucorum Rettig
Det. by
J. H. Rettig 1988-01-01
Collected
J. H. Rettig 1986-05-06
Origin
US
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 22 botanical countries

Regions where Carex lucorum is native: Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Brunswick, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Nova Scotia, Ohio, Ontario, Pennsylvania, Québec, Rhode I., Tennessee, Vermont, Wisconsin ConnecticutIllinoisKentuckyMaineMarylandMassachusettsMichiganMinnesotaNew BrunswickNew HampshireNew JerseyNew YorkNova ScotiaOhioOntarioPennsylvaniaQuébecTennesseeVermontWisconsin DelawareRhode I.
Native distribution of Carex lucorum, 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
Connecticut CNT NORTHERN AMERICA
Delaware DEL
Illinois ILL
Kentucky KTY
Maine MAI
Maryland MRY
Massachusetts MAS
Michigan MIC
Minnesota MIN
New Brunswick NBR
New Hampshire NWH
New Jersey NWJ
New York NWY
Nova Scotia NSC
Ohio OHI
Ontario ONT
Pennsylvania PEN
Québec QUE
Rhode I. RHO
Tennessee TEN
Vermont VER
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 105 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -16.3 °C -13.4 °C -5.7 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 22.8 °C 24.8 °C 27.7 °C
Annual rainfall 849 mm 1,029 mm 1,528 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 158 mm 207 mm 323 mm

It is found where winters are severely cold. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 105 research-grade observations of Carex lucorum 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 8 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 lucorum Willd.
  • Carex michiganensis Dewey ex Alph.Wood
  • Carex pensylvanica f. separans (Peck) Kük.
  • Carex pensylvanica var. distans Peck
  • Carex pensylvanica var. lucorum (Willd.) Boeckeler
  • Carex pensylvanica var. lucorum (Willd. ex Link) Fernald
  • Carex pensylvanica var. separans Peck
  • Vignea lucorum (Willd. ex Link) Rchb.

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. USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol CALU17. public domain. 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.