Climacium americanum (American climacium moss)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Climacium americanum, photographed by Michael J. Papay — fig. a Michael J. Papay, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-02-15 / obs. 179605195

Climacium americanum, photographed by Elias — fig. b Elias, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 176063020

Climacium americanum, photographed by Violet T. — fig. c Violet T., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 174460477

Climacium americanum, photographed by Summit Metro Parks — fig. d Summit Metro Parks, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 134155609

Climacium americanum, photographed by Tom Field — fig. e Tom Field, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 122266620

Climacium americanum, photographed by M Sorensen — fig. f M Sorensen, CC0 1.0 / obs. 118336510

Climacium americanum, photographed by Sean Grasing — fig. g Sean Grasing, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 114769729

Climacium americanum, photographed by Larry Jensen — fig. h Larry Jensen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 105877337

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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 1,230 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	-10.5 °C	-4.8 °C	1.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	24.9 °C	28.1 °C	31.7 °C
Annual rainfall	922 mm	1,169 mm	1,508 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	134 mm	240 mm	318 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 1,230 research-grade observations of Climacium americanum 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 Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.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 8 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.

Climacium americanum subsp. kindbergii (Renauld & Cardot) Kindb.
Climacium americanum var. americanum
Climacium americanum var. kindbergii Renauld & Cardot
Climacium americanum var. pseudokindbergii Cardot & Thér.
Climacium kindbergii (Renauld & Cardot) Grout
Hypnum dendroides var. americanum (Brid.) Arn.
Neckera americana (Brid.) Trevis.
Neckera dendroides var. americana (Brid.) Müll.Hal.

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.

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. It has no native range either: Kew's checklist does not cover this taxon.