Festuca paradoxaDesv.

clustered fescue

WFO wfo-0000871547 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Festuca paradoxa, photographed by Ryan Sorrells
fig. a Ryan Sorrells, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-07-26 / obs. 146396502
Festuca paradoxa, photographed by Ryan Sorrells
fig. b Ryan Sorrells, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 146395406
Festuca paradoxa, photographed by Alan Weakley
fig. c Alan Weakley, CC0 1.0 / obs. 42866245
Festuca paradoxa, photographed by Sam Kieschnick
fig. d Sam Kieschnick, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 4157215
Festuca paradoxa, photographed by John Kees
fig. e John Kees, CC0 1.0 / obs. 204027791
Festuca paradoxa, photographed by John Kees
fig. f John Kees, CC0 1.0 / obs. 202327184
Festuca paradoxa, photographed by John Kees
fig. g John Kees, CC0 1.0 / obs. 198486685
Festuca paradoxa, photographed by John Michael
fig. h John Michael, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 149836468

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
K000913253
Filed as
Festuca paradoxa Desv.
Det. by
Alexeev, E.
Collected
Mead
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 23 botanical countries

Regions where Festuca paradoxa is native: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, District of Columbia, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Ontario, Pennsylvania, Québec, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia AlabamaArkansasGeorgiaIllinoisIndianaKentuckyLouisianaMarylandMinnesotaMississippiMissouriNebraskaNorth CarolinaOklahomaOntarioPennsylvaniaQuébecSouth CarolinaTennesseeTexasVirginia DelawareDistrict of Columbia
Native distribution of Festuca paradoxa, 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
Delaware DEL
District of Columbia WDC
Georgia GEO
Illinois ILL
Indiana INI
Kentucky KTY
Louisiana LOU
Maryland MRY
Minnesota MIN
Mississippi MSI
Missouri MSO
Nebraska NEB
North Carolina NCA
Oklahoma OKL
Ontario ONT
Pennsylvania PEN
Québec QUE
South Carolina SCA
Tennessee TEN
Texas TEX
Virginia VRG

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 146 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -7.6 °C 0.8 °C 4.6 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 29.0 °C 32.2 °C 33.7 °C
Annual rainfall 1,061 mm 1,272 mm 1,490 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 163 mm 245 mm 308 mm

It is found where winters bring hard 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 146 research-grade observations of Festuca paradoxa 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 7 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 nutans Biehler
  • Festuca nutans var. major Vasey
  • Festuca nutans var. palustris Alph.Wood
  • Festuca nutans var. shortii (Alph.Wood) Beal
  • Festuca shortii Alph.Wood
  • Gnomonia nutans Lunell
  • Poa nutans Link

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.