Lamarckia aurea(L.) Moench

Golden-Top Grassgolden-topgoldentopgoldentop grass

WFO wfo-0000877504 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Lamarckia aurea, photographed by Rafael Medina
fig. a Rafael Medina, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-21 / obs. 199397002

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
2457307
Filed as
Lamarckia aurea (L.) Moench
Det. by
J. Richard Abbott 2015-01-01
Collected
not recorded
Origin
not recorded
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 39 botanical countries

Regions where Lamarckia aurea is native: Algeria, Canary Is., Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Libya, Madeira, Morocco, Sudan-South Sudan, Tunisia, Western Sahara, Afghanistan, Cyprus, East Aegean Is., Gulf States, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon-Syria, Oman, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Sinai, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, Yemen, India, Pakistan, Baleares, Corse, France, Greece, Italy, Kriti, NW. Balkan Pen., Portugal, Sardegna, Sicilia, Spain, Türkiye-in-Europe AlgeriaEgyptEritreaEthiopiaLibyaMoroccoSudan-South SudanTunisiaWestern SaharaAfghanistanCyprusEast Aegean Is.Gulf StatesIranIraqLebanon-SyriaOmanPalestineSaudi ArabiaSinaiTranscaucasusTürkiyeYemenIndiaPakistanCorseFranceGreeceItalyKritiNW. Balkan Pen.PortugalSiciliaSpainTürkiye-in-Europe Canary Is.MadeiraBalearesSardegna
Native distribution of Lamarckia aurea, 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
Afghanistan AFG ASIA-TEMPERATE
Cyprus CYP
East Aegean Is. EAI
Gulf States GST
Iran IRN
Iraq IRQ
Lebanon-Syria LBS
Oman OMA
Palestine PAL
Saudi Arabia SAU
Sinai SIN
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR
Yemen YEM
Baleares BAL EUROPE
Corse COR
France FRA
Greece GRC
Italy ITA
Kriti KRI
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Portugal POR
Sardegna SAR
Sicilia SIC
Spain SPA
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Canary Is. CNY
Egypt EGY
Eritrea ERI
Ethiopia ETH
Libya LBY
Madeira MDR
Morocco MOR
Sudan-South Sudan SUD
Tunisia TUN
Western Sahara WSA
India IND ASIA-TROPICAL
Pakistan PAK

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.

Flowering 202 in flower of 261 examined

Proportion of examined Lamarckia aurea in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 8 8 100% 68% to 100%
Feb 21 23 91% 73% to 98%
Mar 55 66 83% 73% to 90%
Apr 93 114 82% 73% to 88%
May 17 33 52% 35% to 68%
Jun 3 7 43% 16% to 75%
Jul 0 0 too few examined
Aug 2 2 too few examined
Sep 2 4 too few examined
Oct 1 1 too few examined
Nov 0 1 too few examined
Dec 0 2 too few examined

Peak flowering in Jan. Each bar is the share of Lamarckia aurea observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 202 of 261 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 6 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Where it actually grows measured, from 2,042 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 1.0 °C 6.8 °C 13.5 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 22.3 °C 28.7 °C 34.4 °C
Annual rainfall 260 mm 469 mm 793 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 4 mm 10 mm 77 mm

It is found where winters are cool but frost is light or absent. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 2,042 research-grade observations of Lamarckia aurea 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. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

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.

  • Achyrodes aureum (L.) Kuntze
  • Achyrodes aureum var. variegatum Kuntze
  • Chrysurus aureus (L.) Besser
  • Chrysurus aureus P.Beauv.
  • Chrysurus cynosuroides Pers.
  • Cynosurus aureus L.
  • Lamarckia hookeriana Griff.
  • Pterium elegans Desv.
  • Tinaea elegans Garzia ex Parl.

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.