Plate 1 figs. a–h · 7 observations
This species has been photographed under an open licence only 7 times, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.
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 13 botanical countries
| Region | TDWG code | Continent |
|---|---|---|
| Alabama | ALA | NORTHERN AMERICA |
| Delaware | DEL | |
| Florida | FLA | |
| Georgia | GEO | |
| Louisiana | LOU | |
| Maryland | MRY | |
| Mississippi | MSI | |
| New Jersey | NWJ | |
| New York | NWY | |
| North Carolina | NCA | |
| South Carolina | SCA | |
| Texas | TEX | |
| Virginia | VRG |
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.
Where it actually grows measured, from 180 observations
| Condition | 5th percentile | Median | 95th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coldest month, mean daily low | 3.7 °C | 8.1 °C | 15.8 °C |
| Warmest month, mean daily high | 29.2 °C | 31.2 °C | 33.0 °C |
| Annual rainfall | 1,270 mm | 1,574 mm | 1,822 mm |
| Rainfall in the driest quarter | 161 mm | 309 mm | 360 mm |
It is found where winters are cool but frost is light or absent. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 180 research-grade observations of Rhynchospora cephalantha 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 Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.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 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.
- Rhynchospora biceps Torr. ex A.Gray
- Rhynchospora cephalantha f. antrorsa Gale
- Rhynchospora cephalantha f. cephalantha
- Rhynchospora cephalantha f. controversa Gale
- Rhynchospora cephalantha var. attenuata Gale
- Rhynchospora cephalantha var. cephalantha
- Rhynchospora cephalantha var. luxurians Boeckeler
- Rhynchospora cephalantha var. pleiocephala Fernald & Gale
- Rhynchospora cephalantha var. typica Fernald & Gale
- Rhynchospora intermedia Beyr. ex Kunth
Sourcesevery claim on this page
- World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
- iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
- Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
- 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.