Erianthus alopecuroides(L.) Elliott

silver plumegrass

WFO wfo-0000868895 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Erianthus alopecuroides, photographed by Leila Dasher
fig. a Leila Dasher, CC BY 4.0 / 2020-12-03 / obs. 106546165
Erianthus alopecuroides, photographed by cwarneke
fig. b cwarneke, CC0 1.0 / obs. 11416155
Erianthus alopecuroides, photographed by ch3chia
fig. c ch3chia, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 57323113
Erianthus alopecuroides, photographed by Alan Weakley
fig. d Alan Weakley, CC0 1.0 / obs. 99421103
Erianthus alopecuroides, photographed by Alan Weakley
fig. e Alan Weakley, CC0 1.0 / obs. 93890991
Erianthus alopecuroides, photographed by Will McFarland
fig. f Will McFarland, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 54537899
Erianthus alopecuroides, photographed by Will McFarland
fig. g Will McFarland, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 27520845
Erianthus alopecuroides, photographed by Will McFarland
fig. h Will McFarland, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 27110519

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
1689290
Filed as
Erianthus alopecuroides (L.) Elliott
Det. by
not recorded on this sheet
Collected
D. S. Correll 1962-10-14
Origin
US
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 21 botanical countries

Regions where Erianthus alopecuroides is native: Alabama, Arkansas, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia AlabamaArkansasFloridaGeorgiaIllinoisIndianaKentuckyLouisianaMarylandMississippiMissouriNew JerseyNorth CarolinaOhioOklahomaSouth CarolinaTennesseeTexasVirginiaWest Virginia District of Columbia
Native distribution of Erianthus alopecuroides, 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
Alabama ALA NORTHERN AMERICA
Arkansas ARK
District of Columbia WDC
Florida FLA
Georgia GEO
Illinois ILL
Indiana INI
Kentucky KTY
Louisiana LOU
Maryland MRY
Mississippi MSI
Missouri MSO
New Jersey NWJ
North Carolina NCA
Ohio OHI
Oklahoma OKL
South Carolina SCA
Tennessee TEN
Texas TEX
Virginia VRG
West Virginia WVA

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 193 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -2.5 °C 0.9 °C 5.2 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 29.7 °C 31.4 °C 32.9 °C
Annual rainfall 1,137 mm 1,298 mm 1,556 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 227 mm 267 mm 321 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 193 research-grade observations of Erianthus alopecuroides 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 6 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.

  • Andropogon alopecuroides L.
  • Andropogon divaricatus L.
  • Erianthus alopecuroides var. hirsutus Nash
  • Erianthus divaricatus (L.) Hitchc.
  • Saccharum alopecuroides (L.) Nutt.
  • Saccharum alopecuroides subvar. divaricatum (L.) Roberty

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. USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol SAAL21. public domain. 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.