Leersia monandraSw.

bunch cutgrass

WFO wfo-0000877685 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 3 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 3 times, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Leersia monandra, photographed by Cleveland Powell
fig. a Cleveland Powell, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-11-21 / obs. 170098460

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 13 botanical countries

Regions where Leersia monandra is native: Florida, Mexico Gulf, Mexico Northeast, Mexico Southeast, Mexico Southwest, Texas, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Leeward Is., Puerto Rico, Windward Is. FloridaMexico GulfMexico NortheastMexico SoutheastMexico SouthwestTexasCubaDominican RepublicHaitiJamaicaPuerto Rico Leeward Is.Windward Is.
Native distribution of Leersia monandra, 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
Cuba CUB SOUTHERN AMERICA
Dominican Republic DOM
Haiti HAI
Jamaica JAM
Leeward Is. LEE
Puerto Rico PUE
Windward Is. WIN
Florida FLA NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Gulf MXG
Mexico Northeast MXE
Mexico Southeast MXT
Mexico Southwest MXS
Texas TEX

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 44 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 6.3 °C 6.8 °C 8.9 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 34.0 °C 34.5 °C 35.1 °C
Annual rainfall 845 mm 885 mm 1,019 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 150 mm 156 mm 212 mm

It is barely found anywhere that freezes. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 44 research-grade observations of Leersia monandra 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.

  • Asprella monandra Roem. & Schult.
  • Asprella monandra (Sw.) Roem. & Schult.
  • Homalocenchrus monandrus (Sw.) Kuntze
  • Leersia aspera Nees ex Trin.
  • Leersia aspera Nees ex Steud.
  • Oryza monandra (Sw.) Döll
  • Oryza monandra var. monandra
  • Oryza monandra var. parviflora Döll
  • Paspalum cubense Spreng.

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.