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Pictured: Carex atrofusca — the species. This variety isn’t separately illustrated.
Cyperaceae family
Darkbrown Sedge (var. major) Carex atrofusca var. majorvariety
Native
Darkbrown Sedge (var. major) is a perennial grass native to Alaska.
More about this plant
Carex atrofusca, the dark brown sedge or scorched alpine sedge, is a species of sedge with a circumpolar or circumboreal distribution in the northern hemisphere. Wikipedia →
Herb layer — Sits in the herb of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →
derived roles
Species characteristics from USDA PLANTS (public domain) + TRY (CC BY) — general guidance, not a
guarantee for your exact site. Deer "browsing" is documented palatability, not a deer-proof claim.
Native butterfly & moth caterpillars are the base of the terrestrial food web — most
songbirds rear their young almost entirely on them. As a host for native Lepidoptera this is
a strong genus.
Recorded feeding on Carex in North America, including:
Keystone count (genus-level) from Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use records. Named species (a documented Nearctic sample, not exhaustive) from NHM HOSTS (CC0).
Species thumbnails re-hosted from iNaturalist — Creative Commons, credited per image (hover for credit). Click any species to see it on iNaturalist. Not exhaustive; many taxa have no openly-licensed photo yet.
Spot an error or have a better photo? Every field links to its source, and the whole dataset is open.
Cite this pageOpen data, please attribute ▸
PlantKey’s data is open under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to reuse and adapt, with attribution and the same licence. Photos keep their own per-image licence + credit (see Sources above).
