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 14 botanical countries
| Region | TDWG code | Continent |
|---|---|---|
| Alaska | ASK | NORTHERN AMERICA |
| Alberta | ABT | |
| Aleutian Is. | ALU | |
| British Columbia | BRC | |
| California | CAL | |
| Idaho | IDA | |
| Montana | MNT | |
| Oregon | ORE | |
| Utah | UTA | |
| Washington | WAS | |
| Wyoming | WYO | |
| Yukon | YUK | |
| Kamchatka | KAM | ASIA-TEMPERATE |
| Magadan | MAG |
Not drawn on the map: Aleutian Is.. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is listed rather than guessed at.
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 145 observations
| Condition | 5th percentile | Median | 95th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coldest month, mean daily low | -15.5 °C | -8.5 °C | -4.0 °C |
| Warmest month, mean daily high | 13.8 °C | 16.8 °C | 23.6 °C |
| Annual rainfall | 1,014 mm | 2,576 mm | 4,003 mm |
| Rainfall in the driest quarter | 75 mm | 212 mm | 387 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 145 research-grade observations of Carex spectabilis 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 Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.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 12 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 invisa L.H.Bailey
- Carex melastoma Fisch. ex Boott
- Carex nigella Boott
- Carex spectabilis f. alpina Holm
- Carex spectabilis f. chrysantha Holm
- Carex spectabilis var. elegantula Holm
- Carex spectabilis var. gelida Holm
- Carex spectabilis var. superba Holm
- Carex tolmiei Boott
- Carex tolmiei var. invisa (L.H.Bailey) Kük.
- Carex tolmiei var. nigella (Boott) L.H.Bailey
- Carex tolmiei var. nigella (Boott) 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.