Cenchrus setaceus(Forssk.) Morrone

Fountain Grass

WFO wfo-0000917303 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Cenchrus setaceus, photographed by Adam J. Searcy
fig. a Adam J. Searcy, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-29 / obs. 201723655
Cenchrus setaceus, photographed by Adam J. Searcy
fig. b Adam J. Searcy, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201723946
Cenchrus setaceus, photographed by Adam J. Searcy
fig. c Adam J. Searcy, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201723772
Cenchrus setaceus, photographed by Tyler Bishop
fig. d Tyler Bishop, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 198478804
Cenchrus setaceus, photographed by Tyler Bishop
fig. e Tyler Bishop, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 198464634
Cenchrus setaceus, photographed by Tyler Bishop
fig. f Tyler Bishop, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 198464213
Cenchrus setaceus, photographed by Tyler Bishop
fig. g Tyler Bishop, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 198475489
Cenchrus setaceus, photographed by Tyler Bishop
fig. h Tyler Bishop, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 198536687

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.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 621 observations

Peak flowering in Apr, from 621 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 15 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.

  • Pennisetum erythraeum Chiov.
  • Pennisetum macrostachyon Fresen.
  • Pennisetum numidicum Paris
  • Pennisetum orientale subsp. parisii Trab.
  • Pennisetum orientale var. altissimum Chiov.
  • Pennisetum orientale var. parisii (Trab.) Leeke
  • Pennisetum parisii (Trab.) Trab.
  • Pennisetum phalaroides Schult.
  • Pennisetum ruppellii Steud.
  • Pennisetum ruppellii var. depauperatum Schweinf.
  • Pennisetum scoparium Chiov.
  • Pennisetum setaceum (Forssk.) Chiov.
  • Pennisetum spectabile Fig. & De Not.
  • Pennisetum tiberiadis Boiss.
  • Phalaris setacea Forssk.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.