Carex maclovianad'Urv.

thickhead sedge

WFO wfo-0000348569 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 3 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 3 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 macloviana, photographed by Nicolás Lavandero
fig. a Nicolás Lavandero, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-12-29 / obs. 179204989

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 1198592
Filed as
Carex macloviana d'Urv.
Det. by
Jimnéz-Mejias, Pedro, (UPOS), Universidad Pablo de Olavide (SPAIN)
Collected
Bro. Claude-Joseph 1924-01
Origin
CL
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 26 botanical countries

Regions where Carex macloviana is native: Falkland Is., Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Alaska, Alberta, Aleutian Is., British Columbia, Colorado, Greenland, Labrador, Mexico Gulf, Montana, New Mexico, Northwest Territories, Québec, Wyoming, Yukon, Argentina Northwest, Argentina South, Bolivia, Chile Central, Chile North, Chile South, Peru Falkland Is.FinlandIcelandNorwaySwedenAlaskaAlbertaBritish ColumbiaColoradoGreenlandLabradorMexico GulfMontanaNew MexicoNorthwest TerritoriesQuébecWyomingYukonArgentina NorthwestArgentina SouthBoliviaChile CentralChile NorthChile SouthPeru
Native distribution of Carex macloviana, 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
Alaska ASK NORTHERN AMERICA
Alberta ABT
Aleutian Is. ALU
British Columbia BRC
Colorado COL
Greenland GNL
Labrador LAB
Mexico Gulf MXG
Montana MNT
New Mexico NWM
Northwest Territories NWT
Québec QUE
Wyoming WYO
Yukon YUK
Argentina Northwest AGW SOUTHERN AMERICA
Argentina South AGS
Bolivia BOL
Chile Central CLC
Chile North CLN
Chile South CLS
Peru PER
Finland FIN EUROPE
Iceland ICE
Norway NOR
Sweden SWE
Falkland Is. FAL ANTARCTICA

Not drawn on the map: Aleutian Is.. 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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 46 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -20.4 °C -11.9 °C -0.3 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 10.7 °C 15.7 °C 21.6 °C
Annual rainfall 610 mm 1,281 mm 3,451 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 51 mm 153 mm 357 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 46 research-grade observations of Carex macloviana 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 29 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 allomacros Steud.
  • Carex festiva Dewey
  • Carex festiva subsp. horneri Piper
  • Carex festiva var. stricta L.H.Bailey
  • Carex festiva var. viridis L.H.Bailey
  • Carex incisodentata Steud.
  • Carex incisodentata Lechl. ex Boott
  • Carex incondita F.J.Herm.
  • Carex leporina Pall. ex Kunth
  • Carex leporina var. elatior Boeckeler
  • Carex leporina var. ovata Laest.
  • Carex macloviana f. decumbens Holm
  • Carex macloviana f. decumbens Kük.
  • Carex macloviana f. involucrata Kük.
  • Carex macloviana f. macloviana
  • Carex macloviana f. viridis (L.H.Bailey) Kük.
  • Carex macloviana subsp. macloviana
  • Carex macloviana var. incrassata Kük.
  • Carex macloviana var. stricta (L.H.Bailey) Kük.
  • Carex multimoda L.H.Bailey
  • Carex olympica Mack.
  • Carex oreades C.A.Mey.
  • Carex ovalis var. minor Brongn.
  • Carex propinqua Nees & Meyen

and 5 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.