Melica muticaWalter

twoflower melicgrass

WFO wfo-0000879301 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Melica mutica, photographed by Ashwin Srinivasan
fig. a Ashwin Srinivasan, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-01 / obs. 193233433
Melica mutica, photographed by Leila Dasher
fig. b Leila Dasher, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 186818663
Melica mutica, photographed by Amber M. King
fig. c Amber M. King, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 186101522
Melica mutica, photographed by John Michael
fig. d John Michael, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 185350346
Melica mutica, photographed by Amber M. King
fig. e Amber M. King, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 124903060
Melica mutica, photographed by Ashwin Srinivasan
fig. f Ashwin Srinivasan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 122259589
Melica mutica, photographed by Alan Weakley
fig. g Alan Weakley, CC0 1.0 / obs. 121940076
Melica mutica, photographed by Alan Weakley
fig. h Alan Weakley, CC0 1.0 / obs. 72284995

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
1739742
Filed as
Melica mutica Walter
Det. by
W. S. Boyle 1943-01-01
Collected
A. W. Chapman
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 20 botanical countries

Regions where Melica mutica is native: Alabama, Arkansas, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia AlabamaArkansasFloridaGeorgiaIllinoisIndianaIowaKentuckyLouisianaMarylandMississippiNew JerseyNorth CarolinaOklahomaSouth CarolinaTennesseeTexasVirginiaWest Virginia District of Columbia
Native distribution of Melica mutica, 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
Alabama ALA NORTHERN AMERICA
Arkansas ARK
District of Columbia WDC
Florida FLA
Georgia GEO
Illinois ILL
Indiana INI
Iowa IOW
Kentucky KTY
Louisiana LOU
Maryland MRY
Mississippi MSI
New Jersey NWJ
North Carolina NCA
Oklahoma OKL
South Carolina SCA
Tennessee TEN
Texas TEX
Virginia VRG
West Virginia WVA

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 731 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -2.3 °C 1.2 °C 8.5 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 29.8 °C 31.6 °C 34.1 °C
Annual rainfall 1,071 mm 1,311 mm 1,610 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 221 mm 264 mm 341 mm

It is found where winters bring light frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 731 research-grade observations of Melica mutica 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 12 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.

  • Lolium canadense Michx. ex Roem. & Schult.
  • Lolium temulentum var. canadense (Roem. & Schult.) Alph.Wood
  • Melica diffusa Pursh
  • Melica glabra Michx.
  • Melica muehlenbergiana Schult.
  • Melica mutica f. diffusa (Pursh) Fernald
  • Melica mutica f. mutica
  • Melica mutica var. diffusa (Pursh) A.Gray
  • Melica mutica var. glabra (Michx.) A.Gray
  • Melica racemosa Muhl.
  • Melica rariflora Schreb.
  • Melica speciosa Muhl.

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.