Hordeum vulgareL.

common barley

WFO wfo-0000875054 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Hordeum vulgare, photographed by Nico
fig. a Nico, CC0 1.0 / 2022-05-28 / obs. 201574074

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
1692173
Filed as
Hordeum vulgare L.
Det. by
D. E. Atha 2012-01-01
Collected
D. E. Atha 2011-07-22
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 26 botanical countries

Regions where Hordeum vulgare is native: Egypt, Libya, Afghanistan, China South-Central, Cyprus, East Aegean Is., Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kirgizstan, Lebanon-Syria, Palestine, Qinghai, Saudi Arabia, Sinai, Tadzhikistan, Tibet, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Yemen, Pakistan, Greece, Kriti, Türkiye-in-Europe EgyptLibyaAfghanistanChina South-CentralCyprusEast Aegean Is.IranIraqKazakhstanKirgizstanLebanon-SyriaPalestineQinghaiSaudi ArabiaSinaiTadzhikistanTibetTranscaucasusTürkiyeTurkmenistanUzbekistanYemenPakistanGreeceKritiTürkiye-in-Europe
Native distribution of Hordeum vulgare, 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
Afghanistan AFG ASIA-TEMPERATE
China South-Central CHC
Cyprus CYP
East Aegean Is. EAI
Iran IRN
Iraq IRQ
Kazakhstan KAZ
Kirgizstan KGZ
Lebanon-Syria LBS
Palestine PAL
Qinghai CHQ
Saudi Arabia SAU
Sinai SIN
Tadzhikistan TZK
Tibet CHT
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR
Turkmenistan TKM
Uzbekistan UZB
Yemen YEM
Greece GRC EUROPE
Kriti KRI
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
Egypt EGY AFRICA
Libya LBY
Pakistan PAK ASIA-TROPICAL

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 1,540 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -15.1 °C -1.4 °C 7.8 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 17.9 °C 23.1 °C 31.5 °C
Annual rainfall 385 mm 696 mm 1,347 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 6 mm 117 mm 238 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 1,540 research-grade observations of Hordeum vulgare 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 168 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.

  • Frumentum hordeum E.H.L.Krause
  • Frumentum sativum E.H.L.Krause
  • Hordeum aestivum R.E.Regel
  • Hordeum agriocrithon A.E.Åberg
  • Hordeum agriocrithon var. dawoense A.E.Åberg
  • Hordeum agriocrithon var. nudum Q.Q.Shao
  • Hordeum americanum R.E.Regel
  • Hordeum bifarium Roth
  • Hordeum brachyatherum R.E.Regel
  • Hordeum caspicum R.E.Regel
  • Hordeum coeleste Viborg ex Kunth
  • Hordeum daghestanicum R.E.Regel
  • Hordeum decaisneanum Hook.f.
  • Hordeum decaisnei Boiss.
  • Hordeum defectoides R.E.Regel
  • Hordeum distichon subsp. zeocrithon (L.) Čelak.
  • Hordeum distichon var. spontaneum (K.Koch) Asch. & Schweinf.
  • Hordeum durum R.E.Regel
  • Hordeum elongatum R.E.Regel
  • Hordeum gymnodistichum Duthie
  • Hordeum heterostychyon P.Beauv.
  • Hordeum hexastichon L.
  • Hordeum hibernaculum R.E.Regel
  • Hordeum hibernans R.E.Regel

and 144 more.

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.