Eragrostis racemosa(Thunb.) Steud.

WFO wfo-0000868336 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Eragrostis racemosa, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. a Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-02-11 / obs. 180204771
Eragrostis racemosa, photographed by Mahomed Desai
fig. b Mahomed Desai, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 155389953
Eragrostis racemosa, photographed by Shaun Swanepoel
fig. c Shaun Swanepoel, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 33684710
Eragrostis racemosa, photographed by bat (Maria Vorontsova)
fig. d bat (Maria Vorontsova), CC0 1.0 / obs. 105801605
Eragrostis racemosa, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. e Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 16005802
Eragrostis racemosa, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. f Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 41941589
Eragrostis racemosa, photographed by Dave Richardson
fig. g Dave Richardson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 190019178
Eragrostis racemosa, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. h Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 34434562

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
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Accession
K000365752
Filed as
Eragrostis racemosa (Thunb.) Steud.
Det. by
unknown
Collected
Drege 1840-01-01
Origin
ZA
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 22 botanical countries

Regions where Eragrostis racemosa is native: Angola, Burundi, Cape Provinces, DR Congo, Eritrea, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Free State, Kenya, KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Northern Provinces, Rwanda, Seychelles, Sudan-South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe AngolaBurundiCape ProvincesDR CongoEritreaEswatiniEthiopiaFree StateKenyaKwaZulu-NatalLesothoMadagascarMalawiMozambiqueNorthern ProvincesRwandaSudan-South SudanTanzaniaUgandaZambiaZimbabwe Seychelles
Native distribution of Eragrostis racemosa, 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
Angola ANG AFRICA
Burundi BUR
Cape Provinces CPP
DR Congo ZAI
Eritrea ERI
Eswatini SWZ
Ethiopia ETH
Free State OFS
Kenya KEN
KwaZulu-Natal NAT
Lesotho LES
Madagascar MDG
Malawi MLW
Mozambique MOZ
Northern Provinces TVL
Rwanda RWA
Seychelles SEY
Sudan-South Sudan SUD
Tanzania TAN
Uganda UGA
Zambia ZAM
Zimbabwe ZIM

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 166 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -1.9 °C 2.8 °C 9.8 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 20.4 °C 24.7 °C 27.4 °C
Annual rainfall 616 mm 912 mm 1,190 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 15 mm 44 mm 94 mm

It is found where winters bring light 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 166 research-grade observations of Eragrostis racemosa 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 11 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 boehmii Hack.
  • Eragrostis chalcantha Trin.
  • Eragrostis chalcantha var. effusa Rendle
  • Eragrostis chalcantha var. hirsuta Peter
  • Eragrostis chalcantha var. intermedia Peter
  • Eragrostis chalcantha var. neesii K.Schum.
  • Eragrostis conradii Pilg.
  • Eragrostis hockii De Wild.
  • Eragrostis lasiophylla K.Schum.
  • Poa chalcantha (Trin.) Kunth
  • Poa racemosa Thunb.

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. 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.