PlantKey Open ecological atlas
Planner
Home / Browse / Mollugo / Threadstem Carpetweed
Wikimedia Commons — CC, credited & licensed per image
Molluginaceae family

Threadstem Carpetweed Mollugo cerviana

Late-season nectar — Flowers in a late-autumn window when few other plants in our catalog bloom — valuable late forage for pollinators (relative to our catalog's bloom coverage).

Threadstem Carpetweed is an introduced annual herb, found in Hawaii and the lower 48 states. It grows to 0.7 ft and blooms Aug – Oct.

⚠ Invasive here — plant a native instead USDA + GBIF

Threadstem Carpetweed is flagged invasive in the U.S. These natives fill a similar niche — same growth habit, bloom season, height, and region — so you keep the look and feed local wildlife instead of spreading a problem.

Little Hogweed
Native
Little Hogweed
Portulaca oleracea
●●○○○
Lambsquarters
Native
Lambsquarters
Chenopodium album
●●●○○
Redroot Amaranth
Native
Redroot Amaranth
Amaranthus retroflexus
●●○○○
Creeping Woodsorrel
Native
Creeping Woodsorrel
Oxalis corniculata
●○○○○
Matched on growth habit · bloom months · mature height · shared U.S. range (USDA + GBIF) — a starting point, not a prescription.

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
Conditions
Sources · Conditions
Cold hardiness (derived) — Hardiness
Hardiness
≥ zone 7 derived from its U.S. range
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0) — Height · Foliage
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
Height
0.7 ft
Lifespan
Annual
Foliage
Broadleaf
In the garden
Ground-cover layer — Sits in the ground-cover of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →
Living mulch / groundcover — Low, ground-hugging grower — can carpet bare soil as a living mulch, shading out weeds and holding moisture.Open guide →
derived roles
The garden year bloom → fruit → fall colour
J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Bloom
Bloom (the flower's colour)
Bloom · Aug – Oct — 137 obs · Herbarium specimens — Park et al. 2023 (CC BY 4.0)
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.

Wildlife & pollinators

How pollinator value is scored →
❧ Caterpillar hosts ~1 caterpillar species

Mollugo supports ~1 caterpillar species.

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 modest genus.

Keystone count (genus-level) from Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use records.
How we know this (1) Methods & honest limits
Photosynthesis Direct fact

A recorded categorical fact: each species is tagged C3 (standard), C4 (heat/water-efficient) or CAM (succulent, night-time CO₂ uptake) — or a facultative combination. We only show a trait card for the noteworthy C4/CAM cases; C3 is the unremarkable majority, kept in the data but not surfaced as a card.

Kattge, J. et al. TRY plant trait database — Categorical Traits Dataset (2012).
Derived values are computed from open data by a published method — labelled, cited, and never shown as a direct observation. Full methodology →
Sources for this entry (18) Open & cited
[01] Scientific name & family — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[02] Growth habit & duration — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[03] Native status & distribution — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[04] Common name — USDA PLANTS (via GBIF)
[05] Invasive / introduced status — US-RIIS v2.0 (USGS)
[06] Wetland indicator — USACE National Wetland Plant List (2022)
[08] Ecological value — Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[12] Functional traits — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[13] Photosynthetic pathway — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[14] Cold hardiness (derived) — Derived from U.S. range × USDA PHZM zones
[18] Caterpillar host count — Warren II 2026 (Dryad, CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
Spot an error or have a better photo? Every field links to its source, and the whole dataset is open.
Cite this page Open 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).

Citation

Loading…

BibTeX 
Loading…