Sphagnum tenerumSull. & Lesq.

sphagnum

WFO wfo-0001190323 Accepted WFO 2026-06 3 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–c · 3 separate observations

Sphagnum tenerum, photographed by snail_hiker
fig. a snail_hiker, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-10-17 / obs. 164081358
Sphagnum tenerum, photographed by Bonnie Semmling
fig. b Bonnie Semmling, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 120707282
Sphagnum tenerum, photographed by Brandon Corder
fig. c Brandon Corder, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 59806684

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
1834473
Filed as
Sphagnum tenerum Warnst.
Det. by
D. F. Fares 2008-09-24
Collected
Collector unspecified 1971
Origin
BR
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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 76 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -2.9 °C 5.1 °C 8.0 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 28.4 °C 30.0 °C 32.1 °C
Annual rainfall 1,145 mm 1,443 mm 1,836 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 235 mm 275 mm 325 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 76 research-grade observations of Sphagnum tenerum 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 20 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 aracense Warnst.
  • Sphagnum campicola Müll.Hal. ex Warnst.
  • Sphagnum capillaceum var. tenerum (Sull. & Lesq.) H.A.Crum
  • Sphagnum capillifolium var. tenerum (Sull. & Lesq.) H.A.Crum
  • Sphagnum capillifolium var. virginicum (H.A.Crum & L.E.Anderson) H.A.Crum
  • Sphagnum molle subf. tenerum (Sull. & Lesq.) Warnst.
  • Sphagnum molle var. tenerum (Sull. & Lesq.) Braithw.
  • Sphagnum nemoreum var. tenerum (Sull. & Lesq.) Nyholm
  • Sphagnum purpuratum Müll.Hal. ex Warnst.
  • Sphagnum purpuratum f. laxifolium Warnst.
  • Sphagnum purpuratum var. rubens Warnst.
  • Sphagnum purpuratum var. versicolor Warnst.
  • Sphagnum purpuratum var. viride Warnst.
  • Sphagnum tenerum Warnst.
  • Sphagnum tenerum var. congestum Pichl.
  • Sphagnum tenerum var. speciosum Pichl.
  • Sphagnum tenerum var. virginicum H.A.Crum & L.E.Anderson
  • Sphagnum usteri Warnst.
  • Sphagnum usteri var. versicolor Warnst.
  • Sphagnum usteri var. viride Warnst.

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.