Jarava ichuRuiz & Pav.

Peruvian feathergrass

WFO wfo-0000876537 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Jarava ichu, photographed by Humber Alberto
fig. a Humber Alberto, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-04-30 / obs. 192620366
Jarava ichu, photographed by Humber Alberto
fig. b Humber Alberto, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 191904727
Jarava ichu, photographed by Humber Alberto
fig. c Humber Alberto, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 191997471
Jarava ichu, photographed by Hugo Hulsberg
fig. d Hugo Hulsberg, CC0 1.0 / obs. 183018273
Jarava ichu, photographed by Andrés Ramírez-Barrera
fig. e Andrés Ramírez-Barrera, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 107097619
Jarava ichu, photographed by Alfredo F. Fuentes Claros
fig. f Alfredo F. Fuentes Claros, CC0 1.0 / obs. 61526181
Jarava ichu, photographed by Julien Renoult
fig. g Julien Renoult, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 12030725
Jarava ichu, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. h Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 31077382

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
Smithsonian, US National Herbarium
Accession
US 1034069
Filed as
Jarava ichu Ruiz & Pav.
Det. by
Poaceae Reorganization Project
Collected
Bro. E. Lyonnet 1927-09
Origin
MX
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC0 1.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. We link to the digitised sheet rather than rehosting it, because the holding institutions do not serve their images to third parties reliably and we are not going to show you a picture we cannot actually deliver. 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 sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 15 botanical countries

Regions where Jarava ichu is native: Mexico Central, Mexico Gulf, Mexico Northeast, Mexico Southeast, Mexico Southwest, Argentina Northeast, Argentina Northwest, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Peru, Venezuela Mexico CentralMexico GulfMexico NortheastMexico SoutheastMexico SouthwestArgentina NortheastArgentina NorthwestBoliviaColombiaCosta RicaEcuadorEl SalvadorGuatemalaPeruVenezuela
Native distribution of Jarava ichu, 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
Argentina Northeast AGE SOUTHERN AMERICA
Argentina Northwest AGW
Bolivia BOL
Colombia CLM
Costa Rica COS
Ecuador ECU
El Salvador ELS
Guatemala GUA
Peru PER
Venezuela VEN
Mexico Central MXC NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Gulf MXG
Mexico Northeast MXE
Mexico Southeast MXT
Mexico Southwest MXS

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 195 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -6.0 °C 1.2 °C 5.9 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 9.9 °C 16.4 °C 30.0 °C
Annual rainfall 314 mm 958 mm 2,510 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 9 mm 51 mm 238 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 195 research-grade observations of Jarava ichu 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 10 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.

  • Jarava arundinacea Willd. ex Steud.
  • Jarava eriostachya (Kunth) Peñail.
  • Jarava usitata Pers.
  • Stipa eriostachya Kunth
  • Stipa gynerioides Phil.
  • Stipa ichu (Ruiz & Pav.) Kunth
  • Stipa ichu f. interrupta Hack.
  • Stipa ichu var. gynerioides (Phil.) Hack.
  • Stipa jarava P.Beauv.
  • Stipa liebmannii E.Fourn.

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 STIC. 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.