Niphotrichum elongatum(Ehrh. ex Frisvoll) Bedn.-Ochyra & Ochyra

elongate racomitrium moss

WFO wfo-0001212318 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Niphotrichum elongatum, photographed by Randal
fig. a Randal, CC0 1.0 / 2022-05-16 / obs. 198298766

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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 1,612 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -5.3 °C 1.7 °C 4.8 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 17.1 °C 22.2 °C 25.6 °C
Annual rainfall 803 mm 1,516 mm 3,529 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 76 mm 138 mm 357 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 1,612 research-grade observations of Niphotrichum elongatum 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 Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.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 3 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.

  • Racomitrium canescens f. subepilosum Warnst.
  • Racomitrium canescens var. intermedium Venturi & Bott.
  • Racomitrium elongatum Ehrh. ex Frisvoll

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 RAEL3. 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.