Leptochloa crinita(Lag.) P.M.Peterson & N.Snow

false Rhodes grass

WFO wfo-0001429181 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Leptochloa crinita, photographed by Leticia Jiménez Hernández
fig. a Leticia Jiménez Hernández, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2021-07-15 / obs. 145293207
Leptochloa crinita, photographed by CK2AZ
fig. b CK2AZ, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 60623515
Leptochloa crinita, photographed by Eliseo D Moreno
fig. c Eliseo D Moreno, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 55806303
Leptochloa crinita, photographed by Eliseo D Moreno
fig. d Eliseo D Moreno, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 49962564
Leptochloa crinita, photographed by Eliseo D Moreno
fig. e Eliseo D Moreno, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 29168608
Leptochloa crinita, photographed by Eliseo D Moreno
fig. f Eliseo D Moreno, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 28767705
Leptochloa crinita, photographed by CK2AZ
fig. g CK2AZ, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 28606614
Leptochloa crinita, photographed by CK2AZ
fig. h CK2AZ, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 24433784

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
1830280
Filed as
Leptochloa crinita (Lag.) P.M.Peterson & N.Snow
Det. by
N. W. Snow 2020-11-01
Collected
H. C. Hanson 1919-02-20
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 12 botanical countries

Regions where Leptochloa crinita is native: Arizona, Mexico Northeast, Mexico Northwest, New Mexico, Texas, Argentina Northeast, Argentina Northwest, Argentina South, Bolivia, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay ArizonaMexico NortheastMexico NorthwestNew MexicoTexasArgentina NortheastArgentina NorthwestArgentina SouthBoliviaParaguayPeruUruguay
Native distribution of Leptochloa crinita, 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
Argentina South AGS
Bolivia BOL
Paraguay PAR
Peru PER
Uruguay URU
Arizona ARI NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Northeast MXE
Mexico Northwest MXN
New Mexico NWM
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 226 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 0.7 °C 3.9 °C 10.3 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 27.9 °C 34.5 °C 37.7 °C
Annual rainfall 248 mm 358 mm 718 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 15 mm 35 mm 76 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 226 research-grade observations of Leptochloa crinita 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 17 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.

  • Chloris crinita Lag.
  • Chloris mendocina Phil.
  • Chloris trichodes Lag. ex Parodi
  • Chloropsis blanchardiana (Hack.) Kuntze
  • Chloropsis crinita (Lag.) Kuntze
  • Chloropsis fasciculata (E.Fourn.) Kuntze
  • Chloropsis mendocina (Phil.) Kuntze
  • Leptochloris crinita Munro ex Kuntze
  • Leptochloris greggii Munro ex Merr.
  • Trichloris blanchardiana Hack.
  • Trichloris crinita (Lag.) Parodi
  • Trichloris crinita var. triflora Parodi
  • Trichloris crinita var. typica Parodi
  • Trichloris fasciculata E.Fourn.
  • Trichloris mendocina (Phil.) Kurtz
  • Trichloris mendocina f. blanchardiana (Hack.) Kurtz
  • Trichloris verticillata E.Fourn. ex Vasey

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 TRCR9. 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.