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.
The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection
- Herbarium
- The New York Botanical Garden
- Accession
- 04229273
- Filed as
- Carex spicata Huds.
- Det. by
- R. F. C. Naczi 2019-01-01
- Collected
- Z. Wang 2018-05-24
- Origin
- US
- 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 42 botanical countries
| Region | TDWG code | Continent |
|---|---|---|
| Albania | ALB | EUROPE |
| Austria | AUT | |
| Baltic States | BLT | |
| Belarus | BLR | |
| Belgium | BGM | |
| Bulgaria | BUL | |
| Central European Russia | RUC | |
| Czechia-Slovakia | CZE | |
| Denmark | DEN | |
| East European Russia | RUE | |
| Finland | FIN | |
| France | FRA | |
| Germany | GER | |
| Great Britain | GRB | |
| Greece | GRC | |
| Hungary | HUN | |
| Ireland | IRE | |
| Italy | ITA | |
| Kriti | KRI | |
| Krym | KRY | |
| Netherlands | NET | |
| North European Russia | RUN | |
| Northwest European Russia | RUW | |
| Norway | NOR | |
| NW. Balkan Pen. | YUG | |
| Poland | POL | |
| Portugal | POR | |
| Romania | ROM | |
| Sicilia | SIC | |
| South European Russia | RUS | |
| Spain | SPA | |
| Sweden | SWE | |
| Switzerland | SWI | |
| Türkiye-in-Europe | TUE | |
| Ukraine | UKR | |
| Altay | ALT | ASIA-TEMPERATE |
| Iran | IRN | |
| North Caucasus | NCS | |
| Transcaucasus | TCS | |
| Türkiye | TUR | |
| West Siberia | WSB | |
| Madeira | MDR | AFRICA |
Not drawn on the map: Great Britain. 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 1,984 observations
| Condition | 5th percentile | Median | 95th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coldest month, mean daily low | -13.1 °C | -10.7 °C | -1.1 °C |
| Warmest month, mean daily high | 21.7 °C | 23.4 °C | 26.6 °C |
| Annual rainfall | 530 mm | 670 mm | 1,047 mm |
| Rainfall in the driest quarter | 87 mm | 109 mm | 212 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 1,984 research-grade observations of Carex spicata 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 39 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 contigua Hoppe
- Carex contigua f. fumosa (Gren.) Kük.
- Carex contigua f. pallida Appel ex Woerl.
- Carex contigua f. pseudoguestphalica Asch. & Graebn.
- Carex contigua f. submonostachya Asch. & Graebn.
- Carex contigua var. longissima Tauscher ex Vollm.
- Carex contigua var. mediterranea Asch. & Graebn.
- Carex contigua var. remota F.W.Schultz
- Carex divulsa var. contigua (Hoppe) Nyman
- Carex fraterna Rupr.
- Carex fumosa Rouy
- Carex fumosa (Gren.) Prain
- Carex furculata Peterm.
- Carex lumnitzeri Rouy
- Carex muricata f. argyrolepis Peterm.
- Carex muricata f. mediterranea Asch. & Graebn.
- Carex muricata f. pseudoguestphalica Asch. & Graebn.
- Carex muricata f. submonostachya Asch. & Graebn.
- Carex muricata prol. fumosa (Gren.) Rouy
- Carex muricata subsp. contigua (Hoppe) Moravec
- Carex muricata subsp. furculata (Peterm.) K.Richt.
- Carex muricata subsp. macrocarpa Neuman
- Carex muricata subvar. incrassata Crép.
- Carex muricata var. contigua (Hoppe) Fiori
and 15 more.
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.