Rhizomnium punctatum(Hedw.) T.J.Kop.

Dotted Thyme-mossrhizomnium moss

WFO wfo-0001146672 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Rhizomnium punctatum, photographed by José Luis Camaño
fig. a José Luis Camaño, CC0 1.0 / 2022-06-12 / obs. 205861754

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
04242712
Filed as
Rhizomnium punctatum (Hedw.) T.J.Kop.
Det. by
K.-Y. Yao
Collected
K.-P. Cheng 2017-07-25
Origin
TW
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 1,889 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -12.7 °C -5.3 °C 2.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 16.8 °C 21.7 °C 26.5 °C
Annual rainfall 617 mm 954 mm 1,901 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 99 mm 172 mm 356 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 1,889 research-grade observations of Rhizomnium punctatum 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 18 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.

  • Astrophyllum punctatum (Hedw.) Lindb.
  • Bryum punctatum (Hedw.) Turner
  • Bryum punctatum var. majus Blandow
  • Hypnum punctatum (Hedw.) F.Weber & D.Mohr
  • Hypnum serpillifolium Rebent.
  • Mnium punctatum Hedw.
  • Mnium punctatum f. brevinervium Jelenc
  • Mnium punctatum f. cochlearifolium (Latzel) Podp.
  • Mnium punctatum f. pumilum (Warnst.) Podp.
  • Mnium punctatum f. subglobosum Latzel
  • Mnium punctatum var. cochlearifolium Latzel
  • Mnium punctatum var. globulosum Podp.
  • Mnium punctatum var. pumilum Warnst.
  • Mnium punctatum var. punctatum
  • Mnium punctatum var. subarcuatum J.J.Amann ex Meyl.
  • Mnium serpyllifolium Jolycl.
  • Mnium serpyllifolium var. punctatum (Hedw.) Jolycl.
  • Polla punctata (Hedw.) Brid.

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.