Melica bulbosaPorter & J.M.Coult.

oniongrass

WFO wfo-0000879063 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 6 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 6 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.

Melica bulbosa, photographed by Matt Lavin
fig. a Matt Lavin, CC BY 4.0 / 2019-07-30 / obs. 154613327
Melica bulbosa, photographed by Matt Lavin
fig. b Matt Lavin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 154613255
Melica bulbosa, photographed by Matt Lavin
fig. c Matt Lavin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 173632816
Melica bulbosa, photographed by Matt Berger
fig. d Matt Berger, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204571406
Melica bulbosa, photographed by Matt Lavin
fig. e Matt Lavin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 154613207
Melica bulbosa, photographed by Matt Lavin
fig. f Matt Lavin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 154613276
Melica bulbosa, photographed by Matt Berger
fig. g Matt Berger, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204571412
Melica bulbosa, photographed by Matt Lavin
fig. h Matt Lavin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 154613317

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
1160412
Filed as
Melica bulbosa Porter & J.M.Coult.
Det. by
A. Tiehm 2022-01-01
Collected
T. A. Knight 1988-06-20
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 13 botanical countries

Regions where Melica bulbosa is native: British Columbia, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Saskatchewan, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wyoming British ColumbiaCaliforniaColoradoIdahoMontanaNevadaOregonSaskatchewanSouth DakotaTexasUtahWashingtonWyoming
Native distribution of Melica bulbosa, 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
British Columbia BRC NORTHERN AMERICA
California CAL
Colorado COL
Idaho IDA
Montana MNT
Nevada NEV
Oregon ORE
Saskatchewan SAS
South Dakota SDA
Texas TEX
Utah UTA
Washington WAS
Wyoming WYO

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 -17.0 °C -10.8 °C -5.6 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 19.9 °C 24.5 °C 29.4 °C
Annual rainfall 360 mm 592 mm 1,234 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 34 mm 84 mm 165 mm

It is found where winters are severely cold. 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 Melica bulbosa 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.

  • Bromelica bulbosa (Porter & J.M.Coult.) W.A.Weber
  • Melica bella Piper
  • Melica bella subsp. intonsa Piper
  • Melica bulbosa var. bulbosa
  • Melica bulbosa var. caespitosa Cronquist
  • Melica bulbosa var. inflata (Bol.) Boyle
  • Melica bulbosa var. intonsa (Piper) M.Peck
  • Melica inflata (Bol.) Vasey
  • Melica pooides var. inflata Bol.

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.