Lolium perenneL.

Perennial Ryegrass

WFO wfo-0000878441 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Lolium perenne, photographed by Pavel Kacl
fig. a Pavel Kacl, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-12 / obs. 205687832
Lolium perenne, photographed by Liubov Ilminska
fig. b Liubov Ilminska, CC0 1.0 / obs. 204975848
Lolium perenne, photographed by Grzegorz Grzejszczak
fig. c Grzegorz Grzejszczak, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 205795069
Lolium perenne, photographed by Tyler Ekholm
fig. d Tyler Ekholm, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203013332
Lolium perenne, photographed by Yann Kemper
fig. e Yann Kemper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 202752917
Lolium perenne, photographed by Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas
fig. f Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202108530
Lolium perenne, photographed by Yann Kemper
fig. g Yann Kemper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 202489966
Lolium perenne, photographed by Matthew Vosper
fig. h Matthew Vosper, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201614174

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.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 467 observations

Peak flowering in Jun, from 467 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 69 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.

  • Festuca perennis (L.) Columbus & J.P.Sm.
  • Hordeum compressum Boiss. & Orph.
  • Lolium aechicum Rouville
  • Lolium agreste Roem. & Schult.
  • Lolium annuum Bernh.
  • Lolium brasilianum Nees
  • Lolium canadense Bernh. ex Rouville
  • Lolium cechicum Opiz
  • Lolium compressum Boiss. & Orph. ex Nyman
  • Lolium cristatum Pers.
  • Lolium felix Rouville
  • Lolium glumosum Planellas
  • Lolium gmelinii Honck.
  • Lolium halleri C.C.Gmel.
  • Lolium jechelianum Opiz
  • Lolium latum Roth ex Steud.
  • Lolium marschallii Steven
  • Lolium montevidense Rouville
  • Lolium multiflorum var. ramosum Guss.
  • Lolium perenne f. aristulatum (Schur) Terrell
  • Lolium perenne f. microstachyum R.Uechtr.
  • Lolium perenne subsp. perenne
  • Lolium perenne subsp. stoloniferum (C.Lawson) Wipff
  • Lolium perenne subsp. trabutii (Hochr.) Dobignard

and 45 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.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.