Plate 1 figs. a–h · 5 observations
This species has been photographed under an open licence only 5 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 22 botanical countries
| Region | TDWG code | Continent |
|---|---|---|
| Cook Is. | COO | PACIFIC |
| Fiji | FIJ | |
| Hawaii | HAW | |
| Marquesas | MRQ | |
| New Caledonia | NWC | |
| Niue | NUE | |
| Pitcairn Is. | PIT | |
| Samoa | SAM | |
| Society Is. | SCI | |
| Tonga | TON | |
| Tuamotu | TUA | |
| Tubuai Is. | TUB | |
| Vanuatu | VAN | |
| Kermadec Is. | KER | AUSTRALASIA |
| New South Wales | NSW | |
| New Zealand North | NZN | |
| Norfolk Is. | NFK | |
| Northern Territory | NTA | |
| Queensland | QLD | |
| Western Australia | WAU | |
| Lesser Sunda Is. | LSI | ASIA-TROPICAL |
| New Guinea | NWG |
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 71 observations
| Condition | 5th percentile | Median | 95th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coldest month, mean daily low | 3.8 °C | 8.1 °C | 13.7 °C |
| Warmest month, mean daily high | 23.4 °C | 26.3 °C | 29.8 °C |
| Annual rainfall | 768 mm | 904 mm | 1,625 mm |
| Rainfall in the driest quarter | 99 mm | 149 mm | 225 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 71 research-grade observations of Cenchrus caliculatus 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 7 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.
- Cenchrus anomoplexis Labill.
- Cenchrus australis R.Br.
- Cenchrus australis var. latifolius Drake
- Cenchrus laniflorus Steud.
- Cenchrus taitensis Steud.
- Pennisetum calyculatum (Cav.) Spreng.
- Pennisetum marquisense F.Br.
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.