Festuca kingii(S.Watson) Cassidy

spike fescue

WFO wfo-0000870842 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Festuca kingii, photographed by Matt Lavin
fig. a Matt Lavin, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-08-12 / obs. 157422987
Festuca kingii, photographed by lazarus
fig. b lazarus, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 139622245
Festuca kingii, photographed by Nolan Exe
fig. c Nolan Exe, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 91040425
Festuca kingii, photographed by Matt Lavin
fig. d Matt Lavin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 157422925
Festuca kingii, photographed by Jim Morefield
fig. e Jim Morefield, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 13483901
Festuca kingii, photographed by Jim Morefield
fig. f Jim Morefield, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 13525976
Festuca kingii, photographed by Matt Lavin
fig. g Matt Lavin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 157422832
Festuca kingii, photographed by crothfels
fig. h crothfels, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204937309

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 12 botanical countries

Regions where Festuca kingii is native: California, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Wyoming CaliforniaColoradoIdahoKansasMontanaNebraskaNevadaNew MexicoOregonSouth DakotaUtahWyoming
Native distribution of Festuca kingii, 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.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
California CAL NORTHERN AMERICA
Colorado COL
Idaho IDA
Kansas KAN
Montana MNT
Nebraska NEB
Nevada NEV
New Mexico NWM
Oregon ORE
South Dakota SDA
Utah UTA
Wyoming WYO

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 126 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -17.6 °C -13.4 °C -8.4 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 19.6 °C 23.4 °C 28.0 °C
Annual rainfall 299 mm 516 mm 1,069 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 33 mm 81 mm 172 mm

It is found where winters are severely cold. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 126 research-grade observations of Festuca kingii 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 9 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 confinis Vasey
  • Festuca confinis subsp. confinis
  • Festuca kingii var. kingii
  • Festuca watsonii Nash
  • Hesperochloa kingii (S.Watson) Rydb.
  • Hesperochloa kingii var. kingii
  • Leucopoa kingii (S.Watson) W.A.Weber
  • Poa kingii S.Watson
  • Wasatchia kingii (S.Watson) M.E.Jones

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 LEKI2. 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.