Carex rafflesianaBoott

WFO wfo-0000350522 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Carex rafflesiana, photographed by Leon Perrie
fig. a Leon Perrie, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-02-04 / obs. 178192920
Carex rafflesiana, photographed by Alice Shanks
fig. b Alice Shanks, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 174358432
Carex rafflesiana, photographed by Jon Sullivan
fig. c Jon Sullivan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 168175423
Carex rafflesiana, photographed by Alice Shanks
fig. d Alice Shanks, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 124497403
Carex rafflesiana, photographed by Mike Bowie
fig. e Mike Bowie, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 117758996
Carex rafflesiana, photographed by Leon Perrie
fig. f Leon Perrie, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 113443889
Carex rafflesiana, photographed by Peter de Lange
fig. g Peter de Lange, CC0 1.0 / obs. 114139191
Carex rafflesiana, photographed by Paul Bell-Butler
fig. h Paul Bell-Butler, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 112877891

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
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
4326889
Filed as
Carex rafflesiana Boott
Det. by
not recorded on this sheet
Collected
R. S. Williams 1904-05-14
Origin
PH
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

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 14 botanical countries

Regions where Carex rafflesiana is native: Taiwan, Bismarck Archipelago, Borneo, Jawa, Lesser Sunda Is., Malaya, Maluku, New Guinea, Nicobar Is., Philippines, Sulawesi, Sumatera, Thailand, Queensland TaiwanBismarck ArchipelagoBorneoJawaLesser Sunda Is.MalayaMalukuNew GuineaPhilippinesSulawesiSumateraThailandQueensland Nicobar Is.
Native distribution of Carex rafflesiana, 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. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Bismarck Archipelago BIS ASIA-TROPICAL
Borneo BOR
Jawa JAW
Lesser Sunda Is. LSI
Malaya MLY
Maluku MOL
New Guinea NWG
Nicobar Is. NCB
Philippines PHI
Sulawesi SUL
Sumatera SUM
Thailand THA
Taiwan TAI ASIA-TEMPERATE
Queensland QLD AUSTRALASIA

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 385 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 1.6 °C 6.5 °C 10.2 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 17.1 °C 20.5 °C 22.9 °C
Annual rainfall 654 mm 1,260 mm 2,100 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 133 mm 237 mm 424 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 385 research-grade observations of Carex rafflesiana 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 23 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 bengalensis var. scaberrima Boeckeler
  • Carex bengalensis var. virgata Boeckeler
  • Carex buennemeijeri Nelmes
  • Carex ceramica Nelmes
  • Carex clarkeana Kük.
  • Carex cruciata var. rafflesiana (Boott) Noot.
  • Carex gembolensis var. timorensis C.B.Clarke
  • Carex macrothyrsa Miq.
  • Carex oblonga Nelmes
  • Carex pentacarpa Boeckeler
  • Carex pycnothyrsos Kük.
  • Carex rafflesiana subsp. scaberrima (Boeckeler) T.Koyama
  • Carex rafflesiana var. macrithyrsa (Miq.) Kük.
  • Carex rafflesiana var. minor Kük.
  • Carex rafflesiana var. scaberrima (Boeckeler) Kük.
  • Carex rafflesiana var. tenuior C.B.Clarke
  • Carex scaberima C.B.Clarke
  • Carex scaberrima (Boeckeler) C.B.Clarke
  • Carex semiglomerata Kük.
  • Carex spongoneura Nelmes
  • Carex timorensis (C.B.Clarke) Nelmes
  • Carex virgata Miq.
  • Carex xestogyne Nelmes

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.