Elymus gmelinii(Trin.) Tzvelev

wildrye

WFO wfo-0000866319 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

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.

Elymus gmelinii, photographed by Aleksei Baushev
fig. a Aleksei Baushev, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-09-05 / obs. 158415417

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 3469000
Filed as
Elymus gmelinii (Trin.) Tzvelev
Det. by
Soreng, Robert J., Research Associate (BOT), Smithsonian Institution - National Museum of Natural History (UNITED STATES)
Collected
R. J. Soreng, P. M. Peterson & Zhu Da-hai 1997-08-25
Origin
CN
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. 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 28 botanical countries

Regions where Elymus gmelinii is native: Altay, Amur, Buryatiya, China North-Central, China South-Central, China Southeast, Chita, Inner Mongolia, Irkutsk, Japan, Kamchatka, Kazakhstan, Khabarovsk, Kirgizstan, Korea, Krasnoyarsk, Kuril Is., Manchuria, Mongolia, Primorye, Qinghai, Sakhalin, Turkmenistan, Tuva, Uzbekistan, West Siberia, Xinjiang, Yakutiya AltayAmurBuryatiyaChina North-CentralChina South-CentralChina SoutheastChitaInner MongoliaIrkutskJapanKamchatkaKazakhstanKhabarovskKirgizstanKrasnoyarskManchuriaMongoliaPrimoryeQinghaiSakhalinTurkmenistanTuvaUzbekistanWest SiberiaXinjiangYakutiya Korea
Native distribution of Elymus gmelinii, 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.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Altay ALT ASIA-TEMPERATE
Amur AMU
Buryatiya BRY
China North-Central CHN
China South-Central CHC
China Southeast CHS
Chita CTA
Inner Mongolia CHI
Irkutsk IRK
Japan JAP
Kamchatka KAM
Kazakhstan KAZ
Khabarovsk KHA
Kirgizstan KGZ
Korea KOR
Krasnoyarsk KRA
Kuril Is. KUR
Manchuria CHM
Mongolia MON
Primorye PRM
Qinghai CHQ
Sakhalin SAK
Turkmenistan TKM
Tuva TVA
Uzbekistan UZB
West Siberia WSB
Xinjiang CHX
Yakutiya YAK

Not drawn on the map: Kuril Is.. 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 253 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -26.7 °C -25.7 °C -19.3 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 19.3 °C 24.1 °C 24.3 °C
Annual rainfall 324 mm 389 mm 826 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 15 mm 29 mm 71 mm

It is found where winters are arctic. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 253 research-grade observations of Elymus gmelinii 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 29 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 caninum var. gmelinii (Trin.) Pease & A.H.Moore
  • Agropyron gmelinii (Trin.) Scribn. & J.G.Sm.
  • Agropyron gmelinii subsp. tenuisetum (Ohwi) T.Koyama
  • Agropyron gmelinii var. planifolia Gudoschn.
  • Agropyron gmelinii var. tenuisetum (Ohwi) Ohwi
  • Agropyron turczaninovii Drobow
  • Agropyron turczaninovii var. macrantherum Ohwi
  • Agropyron turczaninovii var. tenuisetum Ohwi
  • Agropyron turczaninowii var. macratherum Ohwi
  • Agropyron turczaninowii var. tenuisetum Ohwi
  • Elymus gmelinii subsp. tenuisetus (Ohwi) Á.Löve
  • Elymus gmelinii var. gmelinii
  • Elymus gmelinii var. macrantherus (Ohwi) S.L.Chen & G.H.Zhu
  • Elymus gmelinii var. tenuisetus (Ohwi) Osada
  • Elymus sarymsactensis Kotukhov
  • Elymus tarbagataicus Kotukhov
  • Elytrigia czindogatuica Kotukhov
  • Roegneria gmelinii (Trin.) Kitag.
  • Roegneria gmelinii var. macranthera (Ohwi) Kitag.
  • Roegneria gmelinii var. tenuiseta Ohwi
  • Roegneria macrathera (Ohwi) L.B.Cai
  • Roegneria turczaninovii (Drobow) Nevski
  • Roegneria turczaninovii var. pohuashanensis Keng & S.L.Chen
  • Roegneria turczaninovii var. tenuiseta Ohwi

and 5 more.

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.