Pseudobraunia californica(Lesq.) Broth.

California pseudobraunia moss

WFO wfo-0001170990 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Pseudobraunia californica, photographed by Braden J. Judson
fig. a Braden J. Judson, CC0 1.0 / 2022-05-02 / obs. 197066836

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 73 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -1.5 °C 2.5 °C 4.8 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 18.0 °C 22.9 °C 34.3 °C
Annual rainfall 657 mm 1,187 mm 2,108 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 9 mm 89 mm 163 mm

It is found where winters bring light 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 73 research-grade observations of Pseudobraunia californica 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 Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.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 5 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.

  • Braunia californica Lesq.
  • Braunia californica var. pilifera (Mitt.) Lesq. & James
  • Hedwigia californica (Lesq.) Kindb.
  • Hedwigia pilifera Mitt.
  • Pseudobraunia californica var. pilifera (Mitt.) Broth.

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.