Carex planostachys (cedar sedge)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Carex planostachys, photographed by Cleveland Powell — fig. a Cleveland Powell, CC BY 4.0 / 2020-02-22 / obs. 61987506

Carex planostachys, photographed by Francisco Martínez González — fig. c Francisco Martínez González, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 38075246

Carex planostachys, photographed by Sam Kieschnick — fig. d Sam Kieschnick, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 7293405

Carex planostachys, photographed by Gary Rogers — fig. g Gary Rogers, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 183268819

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 11 botanical countries

Native distribution of Carex planostachys, 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
Arkansas	ARK	NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Central	MXC
Mexico Gulf	MXG
Mexico Northeast	MXE
Mexico Northwest	MXN
Mexico Southeast	MXT
Mexico Southwest	MXS
New Mexico	NWM
Oklahoma	OKL
Texas	TEX
Guatemala	GUA	SOUTHERN AMERICA

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 571 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	3.4 °C	6.1 °C	6.8 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	32.9 °C	34.1 °C	34.9 °C
Annual rainfall	782 mm	889 mm	1,007 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	124 mm	157 mm	188 mm

It is found where winters are cool but frost is light or absent. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 571 research-grade observations of Carex planostachys 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 2 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 halleriana subsp. planostachys (Kunze) Kük.
Carex halleriana var. planostachys Kunze ex Kük.

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.