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.
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.
Native range 52 botanical countries
| Region | TDWG code | Continent |
|---|---|---|
| Alaska | ASK | NORTHERN AMERICA |
| Alberta | ABT | |
| Aleutian Is. | ALU | |
| Arizona | ARI | |
| British Columbia | BRC | |
| California | CAL | |
| Colorado | COL | |
| Greenland | GNL | |
| Idaho | IDA | |
| Labrador | LAB | |
| Maine | MAI | |
| Manitoba | MAN | |
| Minnesota | MIN | |
| Montana | MNT | |
| Nevada | NEV | |
| New Hampshire | NWH | |
| New Mexico | NWM | |
| New York | NWY | |
| Newfoundland | NFL | |
| Northwest Territories | NWT | |
| Nova Scotia | NSC | |
| Nunavut | NUN | |
| Ontario | ONT | |
| Oregon | ORE | |
| Québec | QUE | |
| Saskatchewan | SAS | |
| Utah | UTA | |
| Vermont | VER | |
| Washington | WAS | |
| Wyoming | WYO | |
| Yukon | YUK | |
| Altay | ALT | ASIA-TEMPERATE |
| China North-Central | CHN | |
| Chita | CTA | |
| Irkutsk | IRK | |
| Kamchatka | KAM | |
| Kazakhstan | KAZ | |
| Khabarovsk | KHA | |
| Kirgizstan | KGZ | |
| Krasnoyarsk | KRA | |
| Magadan | MAG | |
| Mongolia | MON | |
| Qinghai | CHQ | |
| Tadzhikistan | TZK | |
| Tibet | CHT | |
| Tuva | TVA | |
| West Siberia | WSB | |
| Xinjiang | CHX | |
| Yakutiya | YAK | |
| North European Russia | RUN | EUROPE |
| Svalbard | SVA | |
| Sweden | SWE |
Not drawn on the map: Aleutian 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 35 observations
| Condition | 5th percentile | Median | 95th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coldest month, mean daily low | -34.1 °C | -25.5 °C | -16.6 °C |
| Warmest month, mean daily high | 6.4 °C | 13.1 °C | 16.7 °C |
| Annual rainfall | 222 mm | 499 mm | 1,102 mm |
| Rainfall in the driest quarter | 23 mm | 65 mm | 179 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 35 research-grade observations of Festuca brachyphylla 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 20 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.
- Festuca brachyphylla f. flavida Polunin
- Festuca brachyphylla subsp. brachyphylla
- Festuca brachyphylla subsp. breviculmis Fred.
- Festuca brachyphylla subsp. coloradensis Fred.
- Festuca brachyphylla var. arctica (St.-Yves) Litard.
- Festuca brachyphylla var. brachyphylla
- Festuca brachyphylla var. coloradensis (Fred.) Dorn
- Festuca brachyphylla var. groenlandica Schol.
- Festuca brevifolia R.Br.
- Festuca brevifolia var. arctica St.-Yves
- Festuca groenlandica (Schol.) Fred.
- Festuca jensenii Gjaerev. & Ryvarden
- Festuca jouldosensis D.M.Chang
- Festuca ovina f. subspicata Lange
- Festuca ovina subsp. brachyphylla (Schult.) Piper
- Festuca ovina subsp. brevifolia (S.Watson) Hack.
- Festuca ovina subsp. purpusiana St.-Yves
- Festuca ovina var. borealis Lange
- Festuca ovina var. brachyphylla (Schult.) Piper
- Festuca ovina var. brevifolia S.Watson
Sourcesevery claim on this page
- World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
- iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
- Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
- 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.