Selaginella muticaD.C.Eaton

bluntleaf spikemoss

WFO wfo-0001109694 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Selaginella mutica, photographed by Craig Martin
fig. a Craig Martin, CC0 1.0 / 2020-09-12 / obs. 97419391
Selaginella mutica, photographed by Matt Berger
fig. b Matt Berger, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 90722513
Selaginella mutica, photographed by Asher P Higgins
fig. c Asher P Higgins, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 52496967
Selaginella mutica, photographed by Craig Martin
fig. d Craig Martin, CC0 1.0 / obs. 32610608
Selaginella mutica, photographed by Craig Martin
fig. e Craig Martin, CC0 1.0 / obs. 3745166
Selaginella mutica, photographed by Eric Knight
fig. f Eric Knight, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203952969
Selaginella mutica, photographed by Cecelia Alexander
fig. g Cecelia Alexander, CC0 1.0 / obs. 133942826
Selaginella mutica, photographed by Matt Berger
fig. h Matt Berger, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 116508631

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 7 botanical countries

Regions where Selaginella mutica is native: Arizona, Colorado, Mexico Northeast, New Mexico, Texas, Utah, Wyoming ArizonaColoradoMexico NortheastNew MexicoTexasUtahWyoming
Native distribution of Selaginella mutica, 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.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Arizona ARI NORTHERN AMERICA
Colorado COL
Mexico Northeast MXE
New Mexico NWM
Texas TEX
Utah UTA
Wyoming WYO

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 165 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -12.3 °C -7.4 °C 0.3 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 23.8 °C 28.3 °C 32.1 °C
Annual rainfall 248 mm 415 mm 525 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 31 mm 47 mm 69 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 165 research-grade observations of Selaginella mutica 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 5 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.

  • Bryodesma limitaneum (Weath.) Li Bing Zhang & X.M.Zhou
  • Bryodesma muticum (D.C.Eaton ex Underw.) Soják
  • Bryodesma muticum var. limitaneum (Weath.) Soják
  • Selaginella mutica var. texana Weath.
  • Selaginella watsonii var. mutica Clute

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.