Carex umbrosaHost

WFO wfo-0000352233 Accepted WFO 2026-06 4 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–d · 3 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 3 times, 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 umbrosa, photographed by Andre Hosper
fig. a Andre Hosper, CC BY 4.0 / 2018-05-13 / obs. 17944379
Carex umbrosa, photographed by Andre Hosper
fig. b Andre Hosper, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 17944362
Carex umbrosa, photographed by Andrea Mologni
fig. c Andrea Mologni, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 119107246
Carex umbrosa, photographed by Andrea Mologni
fig. d Andrea Mologni, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 119107280

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
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Accession
K000960536
Filed as
Carex umbrosa Host
Det. by
Nilsson, O.
Collected
Huet du Pavillon, E. 1853-08-01
Origin
AM
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 29 botanical countries

Regions where Carex umbrosa is native: Amur, Korea, Manchuria, Mongolia, North Caucasus, Primorye, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, Albania, Austria, Baltic States, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Central European Russia, Czechia-Slovakia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Northwest European Russia, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Romania, Sardegna, Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine AmurManchuriaMongoliaNorth CaucasusPrimoryeTranscaucasusTürkiyeAlbaniaAustriaBaltic StatesBelarusBelgiumBulgariaCentral European RussiaCzechia-SlovakiaFranceGermanyGreeceHungaryItalyNorthwest European RussiaNW. Balkan Pen.PolandRomaniaSpainSwitzerlandUkraine KoreaSardegna
Native distribution of Carex umbrosa, 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
Albania ALB EUROPE
Austria AUT
Baltic States BLT
Belarus BLR
Belgium BGM
Bulgaria BUL
Central European Russia RUC
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
France FRA
Germany GER
Greece GRC
Hungary HUN
Italy ITA
Northwest European Russia RUW
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Romania ROM
Sardegna SAR
Spain SPA
Switzerland SWI
Ukraine UKR
Amur AMU ASIA-TEMPERATE
Korea KOR
Manchuria CHM
Mongolia MON
North Caucasus NCS
Primorye PRM
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR

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 194 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -9.0 °C -3.7 °C -0.4 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 20.2 °C 22.9 °C 26.2 °C
Annual rainfall 611 mm 956 mm 1,654 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 104 mm 172 mm 273 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 194 research-grade observations of Carex umbrosa 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.

Named cultivars 2 recorded

Selections of Carex umbrosa that somebody named and propagated. A cultivar is not a botanical taxon: it is governed by the cultivated-plant code rather than the botanical one, so it appears in no taxonomic backbone, and it has no native range and no wild population of its own. These get no page here, because a cultivar has no photographs, no range and no flowering data of its own, and a page with none of those is not a page.

From Wikidata (CC0), joined to this species on its World Flora Online identifier, so the link to the parent is exact rather than a name match. This list is what is recorded in an openly licensed register; it is not every cultivar that exists, and for many genera it is not close. Why, and how far short it falls.

Also published as 34 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 bremurii Christ ex Meinsh.
  • Carex caryophyllea var. umbrosa (Host) Fiori
  • Carex huetiana Boiss.
  • Carex longifolia Host
  • Carex longifolia f. gracilis Kohts
  • Carex mixta Miégev.
  • Carex mixta var. gynobasis Rouy
  • Carex polyrrhiza Wallr.
  • Carex polyrrhiza f. brevifolia Waisb.
  • Carex polyrrhiza f. breviscapa Peterm.
  • Carex polyrrhiza f. subintegra Kük.
  • Carex polyrrhiza var. decalvata Hausm. ex Döll
  • Carex polyrrhiza var. gynobasis Murr
  • Carex polyrrhiza var. huetiana (Boiss.) P.Fourn.
  • Carex praecox subsp. mixta Douin
  • Carex praecox subsp. polyrrhiza (Wallr.) Douin
  • Carex praecox var. longifolia Wahlenb.
  • Carex praecox var. polyrrhiza (Wallr.) Boott
  • Carex praecox var. procerior Gaudin
  • Carex praecox var. umbrosa (Host) Wimm. & Grab.
  • Carex praecox var. umbrosa (Host) Crép.
  • Carex reuteriana Boiss. & Reut.
  • Carex stolonifera var. procera Klett & Richt.
  • Carex umbrosa f. brevifolia (Waisb.) Soó

and 10 more.

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.