Luzula comosaE.Mey.

Pacific woodrush

WFO wfo-0000777754 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Luzula comosa, photographed by Ken-ichi Ueda
fig. a Ken-ichi Ueda, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-03-24 / obs. 184441216
Luzula comosa, photographed by Millie Basden
fig. b Millie Basden, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 69474467
Luzula comosa, photographed by Millie Basden
fig. c Millie Basden, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 69490334
Luzula comosa, photographed by John Hibbard
fig. d John Hibbard, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 32644480
Luzula comosa, photographed by lotusmorning
fig. e lotusmorning, CC0 1.0 / obs. 613656
Luzula comosa, photographed by Sam Kieschnick
fig. f Sam Kieschnick, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 9568359
Luzula comosa, photographed by Millie Basden
fig. g Millie Basden, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 192219732
Luzula comosa, photographed by Millie Basden
fig. h Millie Basden, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 37967679

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 18 botanical countries

Regions where Luzula comosa is native: Alaska, Alberta, Arizona, British Columbia, California, Colorado, Idaho, Mexico Northeast, Mexico Northwest, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Saskatchewan, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, Wyoming AlaskaAlbertaArizonaBritish ColumbiaCaliforniaColoradoIdahoMexico NortheastMexico NorthwestMontanaNevadaNew MexicoOregonSaskatchewanSouth DakotaUtahWashingtonWyoming
Native distribution of Luzula comosa, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Alaska ASK NORTHERN AMERICA
Alberta ABT
Arizona ARI
British Columbia BRC
California CAL
Colorado COL
Idaho IDA
Mexico Northeast MXE
Mexico Northwest MXN
Montana MNT
Nevada NEV
New Mexico NWM
Oregon ORE
Saskatchewan SAS
South Dakota SDA
Utah UTA
Washington WAS
Wyoming WYO

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.

Flowering 31 in flower of 45 examined

Peak flowering in Feb. Each bar is the share of Luzula comosa observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 31 of 45 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 7 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Where it actually grows measured, from 293 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -9.6 °C 3.4 °C 7.5 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 17.3 °C 23.6 °C 31.7 °C
Annual rainfall 543 mm 1,058 mm 2,500 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 7 mm 23 mm 238 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 293 research-grade observations of Luzula comosa 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. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 10 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.

  • Juncodes campestre var. comosum (E.Mey.) Kuntze
  • Juncodes comosum (E.Mey.) E.Sheld.
  • Juncoides campestris var. comosa (E.Mey.) Kuntze
  • Juncoides comosa (E.Mey.) E.Sheld.
  • Juncoides comosum (E.Mey.) Parish
  • Juncoides comosum var. macranthum (S.Watson) Howell
  • Luzula campestris var. comosa (E.Mey.) Fernald & Wiegand
  • Luzula intermedia A.Nelson
  • Luzula multiflora subsp. comosa (E.Mey.) Hultén
  • Luzula multiflora var. comosa (E.Mey.) H.St.John

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.
  4. 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.