Bromus sterilis (Barren Brome)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Bromus sterilis, photographed by Radosław Puchałka — fig. a Radosław Puchałka, CC0 1.0 / 2022-06-09 / obs. 204627892

Bromus sterilis, photographed by KAnatoliy — fig. b KAnatoliy, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204041399

Bromus sterilis, photographed by Pavel Kacl — fig. c Pavel Kacl, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203607372

Bromus sterilis, photographed by Vladimír Fuka — fig. f Vladimír Fuka, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203948075

Bromus sterilis, photographed by Grzegorz Grzejszczak — fig. g Grzegorz Grzejszczak, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 203261787

Bromus sterilis, photographed by Jerry Lanfear — fig. h Jerry Lanfear, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202868440

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 48 botanical countries

Native distribution of Bromus sterilis, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Albania	ALB	EUROPE
Austria	AUT
Baleares	BAL
Belgium	BGM
Bulgaria	BUL
Corse	COR
Czechia-Slovakia	CZE
Denmark	DEN
France	FRA
Germany	GER
Greece	GRC
Hungary	HUN
Italy	ITA
Kriti	KRI
Krym	KRY
Netherlands	NET
Norway	NOR
NW. Balkan Pen.	YUG
Poland	POL
Portugal	POR
Romania	ROM
Sardegna	SAR
Sicilia	SIC
South European Russia	RUS
Spain	SPA
Sweden	SWE
Switzerland	SWI
Türkiye-in-Europe	TUE
Ukraine	UKR
Afghanistan	AFG	ASIA-TEMPERATE
Cyprus	CYP
East Aegean Is.	EAI
Iran	IRN
Iraq	IRQ
Kazakhstan	KAZ
Kirgizstan	KGZ
Krasnoyarsk	KRA
Lebanon-Syria	LBS
North Caucasus	NCS
Palestine	PAL
Tadzhikistan	TZK
Transcaucasus	TCS
Türkiye	TUR
Turkmenistan	TKM
Uzbekistan	UZB
Algeria	ALG	AFRICA
Morocco	MOR
Tunisia	TUN

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.

Flowering 94 in flower of 210 examined

75%

54%

52%

21%

Proportion of examined Bromus sterilis in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	0	0	too few examined
Feb	0	0	too few examined
Mar	6	8	75%	41% to 93%
Apr	30	56	54%	41% to 66%
May	46	89	52%	41% to 62%
Jun	9	43	21%	11% to 35%
Jul	0	8	0%	0% to 32%
Aug	0	1	too few examined
Sep	0	0	too few examined
Oct	0	0	too few examined
Nov	0	2	too few examined
Dec	3	3	too few examined

Peak flowering in Mar. Each bar is the share of Bromus sterilis observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 94 of 210 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 7 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 42 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.

Anisantha sterilis (L.) Nevski
Anisantha sterilis var. sicula (Strobl) H.Scholz
Anisantha sterilis var. stenantha (Chiov.) H.Scholz
Anisantha sterilis var. velutina (Volkens ex Hegi) Tzvelev
Anisantha sterilis var. velutinus (Volkart ex Hegi) Tzvelev
Bromus amplus K.Koch
Bromus delicatulus Sennen
Bromus distichus Moench
Bromus grandiflorus K.Koch
Bromus grandiflorus Weigel
Bromus jubatus Vill.
Bromus jubatus Ten.
Bromus longe-aristatus Gilib.
Bromus scaberrimus St.-Lag.
Bromus scaberrimus Ten.
Bromus sterilis f. glaberrimus Soó
Bromus sterilis f. hirsutior Waisb.
Bromus sterilis f. nanus Bolzon
Bromus sterilis f. pilosus Rohlena
Bromus sterilis var. arrectus Schur
Bromus sterilis var. glabrescens Zapał.
Bromus sterilis var. humilis Tinant
Bromus sterilis var. intermedius Rchb.
Bromus sterilis var. jubatus (Ten.) Heynh.

and 18 more.

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.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
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.