Rhynchospora glomerata(L.) Vahl

clustered beaksedge

WFO wfo-0000516873 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 3 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 3 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.

Rhynchospora glomerata, photographed by Matt Berger
fig. a Matt Berger, CC BY 4.0 / 2020-09-26 / obs. 97376886
Rhynchospora glomerata, photographed by Sam Kieschnick
fig. b Sam Kieschnick, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 55700055
Rhynchospora glomerata, photographed by Sam Kieschnick
fig. c Sam Kieschnick, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 55700015
Rhynchospora glomerata, photographed by Matt Berger
fig. d Matt Berger, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 154001793
Rhynchospora glomerata, photographed by Matt Berger
fig. e Matt Berger, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 154001774
Rhynchospora glomerata, photographed by Matt Berger
fig. f Matt Berger, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 97376906
Rhynchospora glomerata, photographed by Matt Berger
fig. g Matt Berger, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 154001819
Rhynchospora glomerata, photographed by Matt Berger
fig. h Matt Berger, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 97376928

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
01873411
Filed as
Rhynchospora glomerata (L.) Vahl
Det. by
R. F. C. Naczi 2018-01-01
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.

Native range 18 botanical countries

Regions where Rhynchospora glomerata is native: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia AlabamaArkansasFloridaGeorgiaIllinoisKentuckyLouisianaMarylandMississippiNew JerseyNorth CarolinaOklahomaSouth CarolinaTennesseeTexasVirginiaWest Virginia Delaware
Native distribution of Rhynchospora glomerata, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Alabama ALA NORTHERN AMERICA
Arkansas ARK
Delaware DEL
Florida FLA
Georgia GEO
Illinois ILL
Kentucky KTY
Louisiana LOU
Maryland MRY
Mississippi MSI
New Jersey NWJ
North Carolina NCA
Oklahoma OKL
South Carolina SCA
Tennessee TEN
Texas TEX
Virginia VRG
West Virginia WVA

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 124 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -0.7 °C 4.4 °C 8.4 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 29.3 °C 31.7 °C 33.7 °C
Annual rainfall 1,178 mm 1,461 mm 1,770 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 246 mm 291 mm 357 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 124 research-grade observations of Rhynchospora glomerata 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 19 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.

  • Hemicarpha axillaris Britton
  • Hemicarpha axillaris (Lam.) B.D.Jacks.
  • Phaeocephalum axillare (Lam.) House
  • Phaeocephalum glomeratum (L.) House
  • Rhynchospora axillaris (Lam.) Britton
  • Rhynchospora capitellata Elliott
  • Rhynchospora distans Willd. ex Kunth
  • Rhynchospora glomerata f. controversa Fernald
  • Rhynchospora glomerata var. paniculata Chapm.
  • Rhynchospora glomerata var. robustior Kunth
  • Rhynchospora glomerata var. typica Fernald
  • Rhynchospora humilis Beyr. ex Kunth
  • Rhynchospora paniculata A.Gray
  • Rhynchospora pauciflora C.Presl
  • Rhynchospora teres Eaton
  • Rhynchospora torreyana Griseb.
  • Schoenus axillaris Lam.
  • Schoenus capitatus Pers.
  • Schoenus glomeratus L.

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.
  4. 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.