Eragrostis cumingiiSteud.

Cuming's lovegrass

WFO wfo-0000867612 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 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.

Eragrostis cumingii, photographed by Jacy Chen
fig. a Jacy Chen, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-10-18 / obs. 164403392

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 590735
Filed as
Eragrostis cumingii Steud.
Det. by
Peterson, Paul M., (BOT), Smithsonian Institution - National Museum of Natural History (UNITED STATES)
Collected
A. Chase 1907-09-20
Origin
US
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 27 botanical countries

Regions where Eragrostis cumingii is native: China South-Central, China Southeast, Japan, Kazan-retto, Nansei-shoto, Taiwan, Andaman Is., Bangladesh, Bismarck Archipelago, Borneo, East Himalaya, India, Jawa, Laos, Lesser Sunda Is., Malaya, Maluku, Myanmar, New Guinea, Philippines, Sulawesi, Sumatera, Thailand, Vietnam, Northern Territory, Queensland, Western Australia China South-CentralChina SoutheastJapanTaiwanBangladeshBismarck ArchipelagoBorneoEast HimalayaIndiaJawaLaosLesser Sunda Is.MalayaMalukuMyanmarNew GuineaPhilippinesSulawesiSumateraThailandVietnamNorthern TerritoryQueenslandWestern Australia Nansei-shotoAndaman Is.
Native distribution of Eragrostis cumingii, 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
Andaman Is. AND ASIA-TROPICAL
Bangladesh BAN
Bismarck Archipelago BIS
Borneo BOR
East Himalaya EHM
India IND
Jawa JAW
Laos LAO
Lesser Sunda Is. LSI
Malaya MLY
Maluku MOL
Myanmar MYA
New Guinea NWG
Philippines PHI
Sulawesi SUL
Sumatera SUM
Thailand THA
Vietnam VIE
China South-Central CHC ASIA-TEMPERATE
China Southeast CHS
Japan JAP
Kazan-retto KZN
Nansei-shoto NNS
Taiwan TAI
Northern Territory NTA AUSTRALASIA
Queensland QLD
Western Australia WAU

Not drawn on the map: Kazan-retto. 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 68 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 11.4 °C 13.7 °C 17.2 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 28.5 °C 30.1 °C 30.9 °C
Annual rainfall 1,068 mm 2,150 mm 3,069 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 47 mm 95 mm 438 mm

It is not found anywhere that gets close to freezing. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 68 research-grade observations of Eragrostis cumingii 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 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.

  • Eragrostis bleeseri Pilg.
  • Eragrostis brownei Chapm.
  • Eragrostis bulbillifera Steud.
  • Eragrostis cumingii var. kisarensis Jansen
  • Eragrostis cumingii var. rindjaniensis Jansen
  • Eragrostis diandra f. vivipara Domin
  • Eragrostis distans Hack.
  • Eragrostis reflexa Hack.
  • Eragrostis simplex Scribn.
  • Uniola paniculata Llanos

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.