Carex tuckermanii (Tuckerman's sedge)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Carex tuckermanii, photographed by Loopy30 — fig. a Loopy30, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2021-08-26 / obs. 153477659

Carex tuckermanii, photographed by Quinten Wiegersma — fig. b Quinten Wiegersma, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 151489778

Carex tuckermanii, photographed by Norma Malinowski — fig. c Norma Malinowski, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 150038745

Carex tuckermanii, photographed by Henrique Pacheco — fig. d Henrique Pacheco, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 142245948

Carex tuckermanii, photographed by Henry "Nick" Robertson — fig. e Henry "Nick" Robertson, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 140317903

Carex tuckermanii, photographed by Reuven Martin — fig. h Reuven Martin, CC0 1.0 / obs. 82875486

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 15 botanical countries

Native distribution of Carex tuckermanii, 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
Connecticut	CNT	NORTHERN AMERICA
Illinois	ILL
Indiana	INI
Maine	MAI
Maryland	MRY
Michigan	MIC
Minnesota	MIN
New Brunswick	NBR
New York	NWY
Ohio	OHI
Ontario	ONT
Pennsylvania	PEN
Québec	QUE
Vermont	VER
Wisconsin	WIS

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 946 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	-15.4 °C	-12.1 °C	-6.9 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	22.9 °C	25.6 °C	27.5 °C
Annual rainfall	806 mm	983 mm	1,176 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	85 mm	193 mm	237 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 946 research-grade observations of Carex tuckermanii 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 5 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 bullata Dewey
Carex bullata var. cylindracea Dewey
Carex tuckermanii Boott
Carex tuckermanii var. cylindracea Dewey
Carex tuckermanii var. niagarensis C.P.Sm.

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.
USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol CATU2. public domain. 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.