Sphagnum flexuosumDozy & Molk.

sphagnum

WFO wfo-0001185803 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.

Sphagnum flexuosum, photographed by Steven Lamonde
fig. a Steven Lamonde, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-09-06 / obs. 156183659
Sphagnum flexuosum, photographed by Andrew Melton
fig. b Andrew Melton, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 53902780
Sphagnum flexuosum, photographed by Steven Lamonde
fig. c Steven Lamonde, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 156183691
Sphagnum flexuosum, photographed by Andrew Melton
fig. d Andrew Melton, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 53902801
Sphagnum flexuosum, photographed by Helen Waterman
fig. e Helen Waterman, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 181820990
Sphagnum flexuosum, photographed by Helen Waterman
fig. f Helen Waterman, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 129610876
Sphagnum flexuosum, photographed by Helen Waterman
fig. g Helen Waterman, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 181821010
Sphagnum flexuosum, photographed by Helen Waterman
fig. h Helen Waterman, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 129610303

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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 65 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -16.6 °C -4.7 °C 1.9 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 15.8 °C 19.8 °C 26.9 °C
Annual rainfall 623 mm 1,131 mm 2,445 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 92 mm 245 mm 337 mm

It is found where winters are severely cold. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 65 research-grade observations of Sphagnum flexuosum 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 98 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.

  • Sphagnum albescens Huebener & Genth
  • Sphagnum amblyphyllum (Russow) Zick.
  • Sphagnum amblyphyllum f. aquaticum Pichl.
  • Sphagnum amblyphyllum f. inghamii Wheldon
  • Sphagnum amblyphyllum f. renauldii Warnst.
  • Sphagnum amblyphyllum f. rigidum Pichl.
  • Sphagnum amblyphyllum f. silvaticum (Russow) Warnst.
  • Sphagnum amblyphyllum f. silvestre Warnst.
  • Sphagnum amblyphyllum subf. hydrophilum (Warnst.) Warnst.
  • Sphagnum amblyphyllum var. hydrophilum Warnst.
  • Sphagnum amblyphyllum var. ligulatum (Röll) H.Schmidt
  • Sphagnum amblyphyllum var. macrophyllum Warnst.
  • Sphagnum amblyphyllum var. mesophyllum Warnst.
  • Sphagnum amblyphyllum var. strictum Mikut.
  • Sphagnum angustifolium var. gracile (Warnst.) C.E.O.Jensen
  • Sphagnum apiculatum var. silvaticum (Russow) Mikut.
  • Sphagnum brevifolium var. dimorphum (Schlieph.) Röll
  • Sphagnum brevifolium var. majus (Ångstr. ex Warnst.) Röll
  • Sphagnum chinense Brid.
  • Sphagnum cuspidatum subsp. amblyphyllum (Russow) Bott.
  • Sphagnum cuspidatum subsp. rothii (Röll) Bott.
  • Sphagnum cuspidatum var. patens Ångstr. ex Lindb.
  • Sphagnum fallax var. capitatum Röll ex G.Roth
  • Sphagnum fallax var. flexuosum (Dozy & Molk.) Nyholm

and 74 more.

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.