Corynephorus canescens (gray clubawn grass)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Corynephorus canescens, photographed by Yuliana Leshchenko — fig. a Yuliana Leshchenko, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-10 / obs. 204835495

Corynephorus canescens, photographed by Grzegorz Grzejszczak — fig. b Grzegorz Grzejszczak, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 203907157

Corynephorus canescens, photographed by Yann Kemper — fig. c Yann Kemper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 202772028

Corynephorus canescens, photographed by Tomas Pocius — fig. f Tomas Pocius, CC0 1.0 / obs. 202419052

Corynephorus canescens, photographed by Michel Langeveld — fig. g Michel Langeveld, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201164404

Corynephorus canescens, photographed by Adi Peter — fig. h Adi Peter, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 196322070

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.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium: The New York Botanical Garden
Accession: 02609452
Filed as: Corynephorus canescens (L.) P.Beauv.
Det. by: not recorded on this sheet
Collected: not recorded
Origin: not recorded
The sheet: View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 23 botanical countries

Native distribution of Corynephorus canescens, 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
Austria	AUT	EUROPE
Baltic States	BLT
Belarus	BLR
Belgium	BGM
Central European Russia	RUC
Czechia-Slovakia	CZE
Denmark	DEN
France	FRA
Germany	GER
Great Britain	GRB
Hungary	HUN
Italy	ITA
Netherlands	NET
Northwest European Russia	RUW
Norway	NOR
Poland	POL
Portugal	POR
Romania	ROM
Sardegna	SAR
Spain	SPA
Sweden	SWE
Ukraine	UKR
Morocco	MOR	AFRICA

Not drawn on the map: Great Britain. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is listed rather than guessed at.

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 1,977 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	-6.6 °C	-2.0 °C	4.6 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	18.4 °C	23.2 °C	27.1 °C
Annual rainfall	540 mm	656 mm	955 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	77 mm	116 mm	182 mm

It is found where winters bring hard frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,977 research-grade observations of Corynephorus canescens 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 26 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.

Agrostis canescens (L.) Salisb.
Aira breviculmis Loisel.
Aira canescens L.
Aira canescens var. glauca Roth
Aira canescens var. glaucescens Pauquy
Aira canescens var. gracilescens Pauquy
Aira triflora Willd. ex Steud.
Aira variegata St.-Amans
Avena canescens (L.) Weber
Corynephorus canescens f. pallida (Beckh.) Soó
Corynephorus canescens f. viridis (Asch. & Graebn.) Soó
Corynephorus canescens subsp. maritimus (Godr.) Rivas Mart.
Corynephorus canescens var. auratus Opiz
Corynephorus canescens var. flavescens C.Klinggr.
Corynephorus canescens var. intermedia Jallu
Corynephorus canescens var. maritimus Godr.
Corynephorus canescens var. minimus Parl.
Corynephorus canescens var. minor Tinant
Corynephorus canescens var. montana Cout.
Corynephorus canescens var. variegatus Opiz
Corynephorus incanescens Bubani
Weingaertneria canescens (L.) Bernh.
Weingaertneria canescens f. pallida Beckhaus
Weingaertneria canescens f. viridis Asch. & Graebn.

and 2 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.