Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations
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
| Region | TDWG code | Continent |
|---|---|---|
| Labrador | LAB | NORTHERN AMERICA |
| Maine | MAI | |
| Manitoba | MAN | |
| Massachusetts | MAS | |
| New Brunswick | NBR | |
| New Hampshire | NWH | |
| Newfoundland | NFL | |
| Nova Scotia | NSC | |
| Nunavut | NUN | |
| Ontario | ONT | |
| Prince Edward I. | PEI | |
| Québec | QUE | |
| Denmark | DEN | EUROPE |
| Finland | FIN | |
| North European Russia | RUN | |
| Norway | NOR | |
| Sweden | SWE |
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 214 observations
| Condition | 5th percentile | Median | 95th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coldest month, mean daily low | -22.4 °C | -10.9 °C | -6.0 °C |
| Warmest month, mean daily high | 16.0 °C | 19.6 °C | 23.9 °C |
| Annual rainfall | 670 mm | 1,183 mm | 1,617 mm |
| Rainfall in the driest quarter | 97 mm | 251 mm | 341 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 214 research-grade observations of Carex paleacea 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 Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.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 18 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 crinita var. paleacea (Schreb. ex Wahlenb.) Dewey
- Carex gardneri Lepage
- Carex gauthieri Lepage
- Carex maritima O.F.Müll.
- Carex maritima f. brunnescens (F.Nyl.) Almq.
- Carex maritima var. brunnescens F.Nyl.
- Carex maritima var. erectiuscula Fernald
- Carex neopaleacea Lepage
- Carex palacea f. neopalacea B.Boivin
- Carex palacea var. lepagei B.Boivin
- Carex paleacea f. erectiuscula (Fernald) Fernald
- Carex paleacea f. neopaleacea (Lepage) B.Boivin
- Carex paleacea f. paleacea
- Carex paleacea var. lepagei B.Boivin
- Carex paleacea var. transatlantica Fernald
- Carex paleaceoides Lepage
- Carex paralia V.I.Krecz.
- Carex sublimosa Lepage
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.