Encalypta vulgarisHedw.

common candle snuffer moss

WFO wfo-0001165892 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 4 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 4 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.

Encalypta vulgaris, photographed by Petr Harant
fig. a Petr Harant, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-02-23 / obs. 180483909

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
04115551
Filed as
Encalypta vulgaris Hedw.
Det. by
R. E. Magill 1980-01-01
Collected
B. O. van Zanten 1976-09-17
Origin
LS
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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 173 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -7.3 °C -1.3 °C 5.7 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 17.9 °C 23.4 °C 29.8 °C
Annual rainfall 438 mm 758 mm 1,333 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 46 mm 149 mm 287 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 173 research-grade observations of Encalypta vulgaris 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 44 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.

  • Bryum extinctorium With.
  • Encalypta australis Mitt.
  • Encalypta extinctoria Sw. ex Lag., D.García & Clemente
  • Encalypta extinctoria var. apiculata (Wahlenb.) Hartm.
  • Encalypta extinctoria var. elongata Hartm.
  • Encalypta extinctoria var. mutica (Brid.) D.Coker
  • Encalypta extinctoria var. obtusa (Nees & Hornsch.) Broth.
  • Encalypta laevigata Bruch
  • Encalypta leptodon var. extinctoria Lindb.
  • Encalypta novae-valesiae Hampe
  • Encalypta novae-zealandiae Colenso
  • Encalypta obtusata Cardot & Broth.
  • Encalypta obtusifolia Funck
  • Encalypta orsinii De Not.
  • Encalypta pumila De Not.
  • Encalypta rhaptocarpa var. obtusifolia Thér.
  • Encalypta tasmanica Müll.Hal. & Hampe
  • Encalypta vulgaris f. apiculata (Wahlenb.) Medelius
  • Encalypta vulgaris f. aurea Podp.
  • Encalypta vulgaris f. calcarea Podp.
  • Encalypta vulgaris f. grisea Podp.
  • Encalypta vulgaris f. obtusa (Nees & Hornsch.) C.E.O.Jensen
  • Encalypta vulgaris var. apiculata Wahlenb.
  • Encalypta vulgaris var. elongata (Hartm.) C.Hartm.

and 20 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. 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.