The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
A moss-like cushion plant from cold, windswept subantarctic islands, forming dense mats on peat, rock and sand near the sea. It is a wild species rather than a common garden plant, and it is best kept cool, moist and in full light.
Colobanthus muscoides is a low-growing, moss-like flowering cushion plant in the family Caryophyllaceae, found on islands in the south-western Pacific Ocean, especially in the subantarctic region. The specific epithet comes from the Latin muscus (moss) and -oides (resembling), with reference to its growth habit.
The plant is found on New Zealand's Chatham, Snares, Antipodes, Auckland and Campbell Islands, as well as on Australia's Macquarie Island. It is common in coastal areas, where it forms extensive mats in bog communities and grows as cushions on peat, rock and sand in the sea spray zone.
Colobanthus acicularis · Colobanthus canaliculatus · Colobanthus kerguelensis · Antarctic pearlwort · Vascular Plants
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Colobanthus muscoides by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
