Carex michauxiana (Michaux's sedge)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Carex michauxiana, photographed by Quinten Wiegersma — fig. a Quinten Wiegersma, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-08-02 / obs. 148663409

Carex michauxiana, photographed by Reuven Martin — fig. b Reuven Martin, CC0 1.0 / obs. 52360085

Carex michauxiana, photographed by John Brew — fig. d John Brew, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 29431493

Carex michauxiana, photographed by Allan Harris — fig. f Allan Harris, CC0 1.0 / obs. 31342529

Carex michauxiana, photographed by Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng. — fig. g Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 155721080

Carex michauxiana, photographed by Cassidy Best — fig. h Cassidy Best, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 151745249

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 17 botanical countries

Native distribution of Carex michauxiana, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Labrador	LAB	NORTHERN AMERICA
Maine	MAI
Manitoba	MAN
Maryland	MRY
Massachusetts	MAS
Michigan	MIC
Minnesota	MIN
New Brunswick	NBR
New Hampshire	NWH
New York	NWY
Newfoundland	NFL
Nova Scotia	NSC
Ontario	ONT
Québec	QUE
Saskatchewan	SAS
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 396 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	-20.3 °C	-13.9 °C	-8.9 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	18.4 °C	22.1 °C	23.9 °C
Annual rainfall	798 mm	1,115 mm	2,313 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	95 mm	206 mm	434 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 396 research-grade observations of Carex michauxiana 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 4 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 abacta L.H.Bailey
Carex rostrata Michx.
Carex xanthophysa var. minor Dewey
Carex xanthophysa var. nana Dewey

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.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. 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.