Leskea polycarpaHedw.

leskea moss

WFO wfo-0001163007 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Leskea polycarpa, photographed by Christian Berg
fig. a Christian Berg, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-02 / obs. 194280773

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
03216886
Filed as
Leskea polycarpa Hedw.
Det. by
W. R. Buck 2017-12-01
Collected
W. R. Buck 2017-09-16
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 347 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -12.3 °C -4.7 °C 2.0 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 19.5 °C 23.6 °C 27.9 °C
Annual rainfall 558 mm 727 mm 1,323 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 90 mm 120 mm 259 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 347 research-grade observations of Leskea polycarpa 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 Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.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 35 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.

  • Hypnum froehlichii (Brid.) Arn.
  • Hypnum inundatum Dicks.
  • Hypnum medium Dicks.
  • Hypnum multiflorum P.Beauv.
  • Hypnum nudum Dicks. ex Mathieu
  • Hypnum paludosum (Hedw.) P.Beauv.
  • Hypnum polycarpon (Hedw.) Hoffm. ex Müll.Hal.
  • Hypnum polycarpon var. exile (Starke) Müll.Hal.
  • Leskea arenicola Best
  • Leskea brevifolia Lindb. ex Ervideira
  • Leskea exilis Starke
  • Leskea exilis subsp. froehlichii (Brid.) Hampe
  • Leskea exilis var. froehlichii (Brid.) Rabenh.
  • Leskea froehlichii Brid.
  • Leskea froelichiana Wallr.
  • Leskea paludosa Hedw.
  • Leskea paludosa var. gracilis Podp.
  • Leskea paludosa var. polycarpa (Hedw.) Hartm.
  • Leskea palustris Brid.
  • Leskea polycarpa f. brunnescens Latzel
  • Leskea polycarpa f. secunda (Mikut.) Podp.
  • Leskea polycarpa subsp. subobtusifolia (Müll.Hal. & Kindb.) Röll
  • Leskea polycarpa var. exilis (Starke) Milde
  • Leskea polycarpa var. froehlichii (Brid.) Dalla Torre & Sarnth.

and 11 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.