Carex pensylvanicaLam.

Pennsylvania sedge

WFO wfo-0000349907 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Carex pensylvanica, photographed by Katie Kucera
fig. a Katie Kucera, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-04-24 / obs. 191424570
Carex pensylvanica, photographed by Quinten Wiegersma
fig. b Quinten Wiegersma, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201773292
Carex pensylvanica, photographed by Andrea Wallace
fig. c Andrea Wallace, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 194137303
Carex pensylvanica, photographed by Eli Talhouk
fig. d Eli Talhouk, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 190512063
Carex pensylvanica, photographed by Gus
fig. e Gus, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 191194776
Carex pensylvanica, photographed by Trix Niernberger
fig. f Trix Niernberger, CC0 1.0 / obs. 188613351
Carex pensylvanica, photographed by Matt Pelikan
fig. g Matt Pelikan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 188566083
Carex pensylvanica, photographed by Katie Kucera
fig. h Katie Kucera, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 191424238

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.

Flowering n = 665 observations

Peak flowering in Apr, from 665 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 16 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 marginata Muhl. ex Willd.
  • Carex pensylvanica f. androgyna C.F.Wheeler ex F.J.Herm.
  • Carex pensylvanica f. bracteata Peck
  • Carex pensylvanica f. glumabunda (Peck) Kük.
  • Carex pensylvanica f. gracilifolia (Peck) Kük.
  • Carex pensylvanica f. latifolia Kük.
  • Carex pensylvanica f. paleacea Peck
  • Carex pensylvanica f. pensylvanica
  • Carex pensylvanica var. angustifolia Peck
  • Carex pensylvanica var. glumabunda Peck
  • Carex pensylvanica var. gracilifolia Peck
  • Carex pensylvanica var. livoniensis Farw.
  • Carex pensylvanica var. marginata Dewey
  • Carex pensylvanica var. pensylvanica
  • Carex pensylvanica var. pinicola M.E.Jones
  • Carex subbiflora Steud.

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.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.