Imbribryum alpinum(Huds. ex With.) N.Pedersen

alpine bryum moss

WFO wfo-0001213212 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Imbribryum alpinum, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. a Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-02-09 / obs. 179736716
Imbribryum alpinum, photographed by Rafael Medina
fig. b Rafael Medina, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 177915883
Imbribryum alpinum, photographed by George Greiff
fig. c George Greiff, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 158593778
Imbribryum alpinum, photographed by Rafael Medina
fig. d Rafael Medina, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 131013011
Imbribryum alpinum, photographed by Rafael Medina
fig. e Rafael Medina, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 125729025
Imbribryum alpinum, photographed by Rafael Medina
fig. f Rafael Medina, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 125729337
Imbribryum alpinum, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. g Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 113307083
Imbribryum alpinum, photographed by hadynrmurray
fig. h hadynrmurray, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 196830379

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
04273760
Filed as
Imbribryum alpinum (Huds. ex With.) N.Pedersen
Det. by
D. R. Toren 2020-07-01
Collected
J. R. Shevock 2020-07-16
Origin
US
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 188 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -7.2 °C -0.1 °C 4.5 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 14.9 °C 21.6 °C 28.9 °C
Annual rainfall 611 mm 1,175 mm 2,271 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 66 mm 157 mm 417 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 188 research-grade observations of Imbribryum alpinum 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 63 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 afroalpinum Rehmann ex Müll.Hal.
  • Bryum alpinum Huds. ex With.
  • Bryum alpinum f. angustifolium (Husn.) Hérib.
  • Bryum alpinum f. distantifolium (Dixon) Podp.
  • Bryum alpinum f. flagelliferum Corb.
  • Bryum alpinum f. inundatum (Podp.) Podp.
  • Bryum alpinum f. madagassum (Thér.) Podp.
  • Bryum alpinum f. pallidisetum (J.J.Amann) Podp.
  • Bryum alpinum f. pellucidum (Podp.) Podp.
  • Bryum alpinum f. piliferum (Podp.) Podp.
  • Bryum alpinum f. spindleri (Podp. & Stolle) Podp.
  • Bryum alpinum f. viride (Husn.) Besch.
  • Bryum alpinum subsp. atlanticum (Solms ex Lorentz) Podp.
  • Bryum alpinum subsp. calcigenum Podp.
  • Bryum alpinum subsp. henrici Podp.
  • Bryum alpinum subsp. laurentianum (Cardot & Thér.) Podp.
  • Bryum alpinum subsp. meridionale (Schimp.) Kindb.
  • Bryum alpinum subsp. moldavicum Podp.
  • Bryum alpinum subsp. rivulare (Arnell) Podp.
  • Bryum alpinum subsp. viride (Husn.) Podp.
  • Bryum alpinum var. alpinum
  • Bryum alpinum var. angustifolium Husn.
  • Bryum alpinum var. aureonitens Bott.
  • Bryum alpinum var. aureum Venturi

and 39 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. USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol BRAL9. public domain. 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.