Plate 1 figs. a–h · 5 observations
This species has been photographed under an open licence only 5 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.
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 12 botanical countries
| Region | TDWG code | Continent |
|---|---|---|
| Alabama | ALA | NORTHERN AMERICA |
| Arizona | ARI | |
| Arkansas | ARK | |
| Kentucky | KTY | |
| Mexico Gulf | MXG | |
| Mexico Northeast | MXE | |
| Mexico Northwest | MXN | |
| Mississippi | MSI | |
| Missouri | MSO | |
| New Mexico | NWM | |
| Oklahoma | OKL | |
| Texas | TEX |
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 126 observations
| Condition | 5th percentile | Median | 95th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coldest month, mean daily low | 0.5 °C | 4.1 °C | 8.8 °C |
| Warmest month, mean daily high | 32.5 °C | 34.3 °C | 35.1 °C |
| Annual rainfall | 396 mm | 966 mm | 1,442 mm |
| Rainfall in the driest quarter | 37 mm | 178 mm | 296 mm |
It is found where winters are cool but frost is light or absent. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 126 research-grade observations of Cyperus retroflexus 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 Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.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.
- Cyperus subuniflorus Britton
- Cyperus uniflorus Torr. & Hook.
- Cyperus uniflorus var. dicarpus Boeckeler
- Cyperus uniflorus var. pumilus Britton
- Cyperus uniflorus var. retroflexus (Buckley) Kük.
- Mariscus retrofractus Gaertn.
- Mariscus subuniflorus (Britton) T.Koyama
- Mariscus uniflorus Steud.
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.