Carex montanaL.

WFO wfo-0000348977 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Carex montana, photographed by CorentinD
fig. a CorentinD, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-01 / obs. 202894841
Carex montana, photographed by Евгений Егорейченков
fig. b Евгений Егорейченков, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201808458
Carex montana, photographed by Силаева Татьяна Борисовна
fig. c Силаева Татьяна Борисовна, CC0 1.0 / obs. 155402565
Carex montana, photographed by Силаева Татьяна Борисовна
fig. d Силаева Татьяна Борисовна, CC0 1.0 / obs. 146383015
Carex montana, photographed by Christian Berg
fig. e Christian Berg, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 135520616
Carex montana, photographed by Силаева Татьяна Борисовна
fig. f Силаева Татьяна Борисовна, CC0 1.0 / obs. 134289855
Carex montana, photographed by Иван Шихалев
fig. g Иван Шихалев, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 125986958
Carex montana, photographed by Bastien Alegot
fig. h Bastien Alegot, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 122820528

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 265638
Filed as
Carex montana L.
Det. by
Strong, Mark T., (BOT), Smithsonian Institution - National Museum of Natural History (UNITED STATES)
Collected
H. N. Bolander (herbarium)
Origin
DE
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. 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 26 botanical countries

Regions where Carex montana is native: North Caucasus, West Siberia, Austria, Baltic States, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Central European Russia, Corse, Czechia-Slovakia, Denmark, East European Russia, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, Northwest European Russia, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Romania, South European Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine North CaucasusWest SiberiaAustriaBaltic StatesBelarusBelgiumBulgariaCentral European RussiaCorseCzechia-SlovakiaDenmarkEast European RussiaFranceGermanyHungaryItalyNorthwest European RussiaNW. Balkan Pen.PolandRomaniaSouth European RussiaSpainSwedenSwitzerlandUkraine
Native distribution of Carex montana, 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
Austria AUT EUROPE
Baltic States BLT
Belarus BLR
Belgium BGM
Bulgaria BUL
Central European Russia RUC
Corse COR
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
Denmark DEN
East European Russia RUE
France FRA
Germany GER
Great Britain GRB
Hungary HUN
Italy ITA
Northwest European Russia RUW
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Romania ROM
South European Russia RUS
Spain SPA
Sweden SWE
Switzerland SWI
Ukraine UKR
North Caucasus NCS ASIA-TEMPERATE
West Siberia WSB

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 48 in flower of 62 examined

Peak flowering in Mar. Each bar is the share of Carex montana 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. 48 of 62 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 9 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 860 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -16.6 °C -6.0 °C -1.7 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 19.7 °C 22.9 °C 25.1 °C
Annual rainfall 549 mm 744 mm 1,702 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 79 mm 133 mm 303 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 860 research-grade observations of Carex montana 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 35 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 caryophyllaea J.F.Gmel.
  • Carex caryophyllata Kunth
  • Carex collina Willd.
  • Carex conglobata All.
  • Carex czetzii Janka
  • Carex emarginata Willd.
  • Carex filiformis L.
  • Carex gracilis Moench
  • Carex montana f. albescens Bornm. & Kük.
  • Carex montana f. bulboides Waisb.
  • Carex montana f. fimbriata Waisb.
  • Carex montana f. gracilior Waisb.
  • Carex montana f. marginata Waisb.
  • Carex montana f. pallescens Döll
  • Carex montana f. pseudopallescens Kneuck.
  • Carex montana f. remotiflora Waisb.
  • Carex montana f. truncata Waisb.
  • Carex montana subsp. csetzii (Janka) Nyman
  • Carex montana var. conglobata (All.) Nyman
  • Carex montana var. emarginata (Willd.) Nyman
  • Carex montana var. flavida Waisb.
  • Carex montana var. gracilior Waisb.
  • Carex montana var. luxurians Čelak.
  • Carex montana var. procera Gaudin

and 11 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. 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.