Elymus arizonicus(Scribn. & J.G.Sm.) Gould

Arizona wheatgrass

WFO wfo-0000866012 Accepted WFO 2026-06 5 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–e · 2 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 2 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.

Elymus arizonicus, photographed by Cecelia Alexander
fig. a Cecelia Alexander, CC0 1.0 / 2016-09-20 / obs. 12535845
Elymus arizonicus, photographed by Sam Kieschnick
fig. b Sam Kieschnick, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 10680190
Elymus arizonicus, photographed by Sam Kieschnick
fig. c Sam Kieschnick, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 10680191
Elymus arizonicus, photographed by Cecelia Alexander
fig. d Cecelia Alexander, CC0 1.0 / obs. 12535846
Elymus arizonicus, photographed by Sam Kieschnick
fig. e Sam Kieschnick, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 10680192

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
Smithsonian, US National Herbarium
Accession
US 2154310
Filed as
Elymus arizonicus (Scribn. & J.G.Sm.) Gould
Det. by
Poaceae Reorganization Project
Collected
E. R. Sohns 1954-09-04
Origin
MX
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC0 1.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. We link to the digitised sheet rather than rehosting it, because the holding institutions do not serve their images to third parties reliably and we are not going to show you a picture we cannot actually deliver. 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 sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 9 botanical countries

Regions where Elymus arizonicus is native: Arizona, California, Colorado, Mexico Central, Mexico Northeast, Mexico Northwest, New Mexico, Texas, Guatemala ArizonaCaliforniaColoradoMexico CentralMexico NortheastMexico NorthwestNew MexicoTexasGuatemala
Native distribution of Elymus arizonicus, 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
Arizona ARI NORTHERN AMERICA
California CAL
Colorado COL
Mexico Central MXC
Mexico Northeast MXE
Mexico Northwest MXN
New Mexico NWM
Texas TEX
Guatemala GUA SOUTHERN AMERICA

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 5 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.

  • Agropyron arizonicum Scribn. & J.G.Sm.
  • Agropyron caninum var. majus Scribn.
  • Agropyron spicatum var. arizonicum (Scribn. & J.G.Sm.) M.E.Jones
  • Elytrigia arizonica (Scribn. & J.G.Sm.) D.R.Dewey
  • Pseudoroegneria arizonica (Scribn. & J.G.Sm.) Á.Löve

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.