Carex seorsaHowe

weak stellate sedge

WFO wfo-0000351200 Accepted WFO 2026-06 4 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–d · 1 observation

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 1 time, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Carex seorsa, photographed by Zihao Wang
fig. a Zihao Wang, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-08 / obs. 204555555
Carex seorsa, photographed by Zihao Wang
fig. b Zihao Wang, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204485335
Carex seorsa, photographed by Zihao Wang
fig. c Zihao Wang, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204555534
Carex seorsa, photographed by Zihao Wang
fig. d Zihao Wang, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204485390

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
03777118
Filed as
Carex seorsa Howe
Det. by
R. F. C. Naczi 2018-01-01
Collected
not recorded
Origin
not recorded
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. We link to the digitised sheet rather than rehosting it, because the holding institutions do not serve their images to third parties reliably and we are not going to show you a picture we cannot actually deliver. 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 sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 24 botanical countries

Regions where Carex seorsa is native: Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Ontario, Pennsylvania, Rhode I., South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia AlabamaArkansasConnecticutFloridaGeorgiaIndianaKentuckyMarylandMassachusettsMichiganMississippiNew HampshireNew JerseyNew YorkNorth CarolinaOhioOntarioPennsylvaniaSouth CarolinaTennesseeVirginia DelawareDistrict of ColumbiaRhode I.
Native distribution of Carex seorsa, 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
Alabama ALA NORTHERN AMERICA
Arkansas ARK
Connecticut CNT
Delaware DEL
District of Columbia WDC
Florida FLA
Georgia GEO
Indiana INI
Kentucky KTY
Maryland MRY
Massachusetts MAS
Michigan MIC
Mississippi MSI
New Hampshire NWH
New Jersey NWJ
New York NWY
North Carolina NCA
Ohio OHI
Ontario ONT
Pennsylvania PEN
Rhode I. RHO
South Carolina SCA
Tennessee TEN
Virginia VRG

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 111 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -8.3 °C -6.5 °C -1.0 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 24.1 °C 27.1 °C 29.4 °C
Annual rainfall 915 mm 1,133 mm 1,372 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 171 mm 228 mm 308 mm

It is found where winters bring hard frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 111 research-grade observations of Carex seorsa 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 1 synonym

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 rosaeoides Howe

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. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. 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.