Ptychostomum pallens(Sw.) J.R.Spence

bryum moss

WFO wfo-0001213276 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Ptychostomum pallens, photographed by Randal
fig. a Randal, CC0 1.0 / 2022-01-28 / obs. 177497298

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
04444044
Filed as
Ptychostomum pallens (Sw.) J.R.Spence
Det. by
J. Brooks 2021-01-01
Collected
not recorded
Origin
not recorded
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 143 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -16.0 °C -6.0 °C 3.5 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 14.0 °C 19.2 °C 24.4 °C
Annual rainfall 590 mm 1,180 mm 2,306 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 88 mm 207 mm 405 mm

It is found where winters are severely cold. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 143 research-grade observations of Ptychostomum pallens 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 Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.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 188 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 acutiusculum Müll.Hal.
  • Bryum aeneum Blytt ex Bruch & Schimp.
  • Bryum aeneum var. gracilescens Schimp.
  • Bryum aeneum var. subelimabatum Bryhn & Ryan
  • Bryum amblystegium Ryan
  • Bryum anoectangiaceum Müll.Hal. & Kindb.
  • Bryum appendiculatum J.J.Amann
  • Bryum arcticum subsp. purpureum (H.Philib.) J.J.Amann
  • Bryum baldense Venturi
  • Bryum baueri Schiffn.
  • Bryum betulinum Kaurin
  • Bryum betulinum var. amblystegium (Ryan) C.E.O.Jensen
  • Bryum calcareum Venturi
  • Bryum callicarpum J.J.Amann
  • Bryum capillare var. fallax Loeske & H.K.G.Paul
  • Bryum capillare var. rechinii (Cardot ex G.Roth) Podp.
  • Bryum drepanocarpum H.Philib. ex Cardot & Thér.
  • Bryum dubiosum Paris
  • Bryum ekstamii L.I.Savicz
  • Bryum elegans Grev.
  • Bryum ernestii E.Bauer
  • Bryum exstans Mitt.
  • Bryum fallax Milde
  • Bryum fallax f. propaguliferum Mönk.

and 164 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 BRPA70. 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.