Digitaria villosa(Walter) Pers.

shaggy crabgrass

WFO wfo-0000864516 Accepted WFO 2026-06 4 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–d · 1 observation

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 1 time, 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.

Digitaria villosa, photographed by Jay Horn
fig. a Jay Horn, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-11-08 / obs. 167975785
Digitaria villosa, photographed by Jay Horn
fig. b Jay Horn, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 167975744
Digitaria villosa, photographed by Jay Horn
fig. c Jay Horn, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 167975755
Digitaria villosa, photographed by Jay Horn
fig. d Jay Horn, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 167975766

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
825861
Filed as
Digitaria villosa (Walter) Pers.
Det. by
F. S. Axelrod 2009-01-01
Collected
N. L. Britton 1915-02-05
Origin
PR
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 15 botanical countries

Regions where Digitaria villosa is native: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia AlabamaArkansasFloridaGeorgiaIllinoisLouisianaMarylandMississippiMissouriNorth CarolinaOklahomaSouth CarolinaTennesseeTexasVirginia
Native distribution of Digitaria villosa, 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.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Alabama ALA NORTHERN AMERICA
Arkansas ARK
Florida FLA
Georgia GEO
Illinois ILL
Louisiana LOU
Maryland MRY
Mississippi MSI
Missouri MSO
North Carolina NCA
Oklahoma OKL
South Carolina SCA
Tennessee TEN
Texas TEX
Virginia VRG

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.

Also published as 10 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.

  • Digitaria domingensis (Zuccagni) Roem. & Schult.
  • Digitaria filiformis var. villosa (Walter) Fernald
  • Digitaria leucocoma (Nash) Urb.
  • Digitaria obtusa Swallen
  • Digitaria pilosa Michx.
  • Panicum domingense Zuccagni
  • Panicum leucocomum (Nash) Scribn.
  • Paspalum carolinianum Poir.
  • Syntherisma leucocoma Nash
  • Syntherisma villosa Walter

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.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. 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.