Plate 1 figs. a–h · 6 observations
This species has been photographed under an open licence only 6 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.
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.
Native range 16 botanical countries
| Region | TDWG code | Continent |
|---|---|---|
| Baleares | BAL | EUROPE |
| Corse | COR | |
| France | FRA | |
| Greece | GRC | |
| Italy | ITA | |
| Kriti | KRI | |
| Portugal | POR | |
| Sardegna | SAR | |
| Sicilia | SIC | |
| Spain | SPA | |
| Algeria | ALG | AFRICA |
| Canary Is. | CNY | |
| Libya | LBY | |
| Morocco | MOR | |
| Tunisia | TUN | |
| East Aegean Is. | EAI | ASIA-TEMPERATE |
Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.
Where it actually grows measured, from 101 observations
| Condition | 5th percentile | Median | 95th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coldest month, mean daily low | 1.9 °C | 6.4 °C | 10.1 °C |
| Warmest month, mean daily high | 20.1 °C | 25.3 °C | 30.4 °C |
| Annual rainfall | 437 mm | 674 mm | 1,111 mm |
| Rainfall in the driest quarter | 34 mm | 96 mm | 182 mm |
It is found where winters are cool but frost is light or absent. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 101 research-grade observations of Aira cupaniana 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 Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.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 17 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.
- Aira capillaris var. cupaniana (Guss.) Fiori
- Aira caryophyllea subsp. cupaniana (Guss.) Fiori
- Aira caryophyllea subsp. cupaniana (Guss.) Bonnier & Layens
- Aira caryophyllea var. cupaniana (Guss.) Fiori
- Aira caryophyllea var. microstachya Coss. & Durieu
- Aira cupaniana var. biaristata Asch. & Graebn.
- Aira cupaniana var. divaricata (Salis) Maire & Weiller
- Aira cupaniana var. incerta Ces., Pass. & Gibelli
- Aira cupaniana var. magnatutii Asch. & Graebn.
- Aira lutescens Lojac.
- Aira praecox var. divaricata Salis
- Aira sorrentinoi Lojac.
- Aira uniaristata var. incerta (Ces., Pass. & Gibelli) Maire
- Airella cupaniana (Guss.) Dumort.
- Airopsis cupaniana (Guss.) Lange
- Avena cupaniana (Guss.) Nyman
- Salmasia cupanii Bubani
Sourcesevery claim on this page
- World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
- iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
- Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.
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.