Sagina maximaA.Gray

stickystem pearlwort

WFO wfo-0001291335 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 4 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 4 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.

Sagina maxima, photographed by Karen and Mike
fig. a Karen and Mike, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-08-01 / obs. 148531765

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 20 botanical countries

Regions where Sagina maxima is native: China South-Central, China Southeast, Japan, Kamchatka, Khabarovsk, Korea, Kuril Is., Manchuria, Nansei-shoto, Ogasawara-shoto, Primorye, Sakhalin, Taiwan, Xinjiang, Alaska, Aleutian Is., British Columbia, California, Oregon, Washington China South-CentralChina SoutheastJapanKamchatkaKhabarovskManchuriaPrimoryeSakhalinTaiwanXinjiangAlaskaBritish ColumbiaCaliforniaOregonWashington KoreaNansei-shoto
Native distribution of Sagina maxima, 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
China South-Central CHC ASIA-TEMPERATE
China Southeast CHS
Japan JAP
Kamchatka KAM
Khabarovsk KHA
Korea KOR
Kuril Is. KUR
Manchuria CHM
Nansei-shoto NNS
Ogasawara-shoto OGA
Primorye PRM
Sakhalin SAK
Taiwan TAI
Xinjiang CHX
Alaska ASK NORTHERN AMERICA
Aleutian Is. ALU
British Columbia BRC
California CAL
Oregon ORE
Washington WAS

Not drawn on the map: Kuril Is., Ogasawara-shoto, Aleutian Is.. We hold no public-domain boundary for these regions, so they are listed rather than guessed at.

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 137 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -14.6 °C 0.3 °C 9.7 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 14.6 °C 16.7 °C 29.6 °C
Annual rainfall 720 mm 2,377 mm 3,840 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 46 mm 259 mm 503 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 137 research-grade observations of Sagina maxima 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 8 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.

  • Sagina crassicaulis S.Watson
  • Sagina crassicaulis var. litoralis (Hultén) Hultén
  • Sagina crassicaulis var. littorea (Makino) Hara
  • Sagina litoralis Hultén
  • Sagina maxima f. crassicaulis (S.Watson) M.Mizush.
  • Sagina maxima f. littorea Makino
  • Sagina maxima var. crassicaulis (S.Watson) H.Hara
  • Sagina maxima var. littorea (Makino) Hara

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.