Melica unifloraRetz.

wood melick

WFO wfo-0000879476 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Melica uniflora, photographed by Rachel Webster
fig. a Rachel Webster, CC0 1.0 / 2022-06-11 / obs. 205231499

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
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Accession
K000661341
Filed as
Melica uniflora Retz.
Det. by
Xanthos, M.
Collected
Rico, L.; Arevshatyan, I.; Rukhkyan, N. 2004-05-14
Origin
AM
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 37 botanical countries

Regions where Melica uniflora is native: Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Lebanon-Syria, North Caucasus, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, Albania, Austria, Baltic States, Belgium, Bulgaria, Corse, Czechia-Slovakia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sardegna, Sicilia, Spain, Svalbard, Sweden, Switzerland, Türkiye-in-Europe, Ukraine AlgeriaMoroccoTunisiaLebanon-SyriaNorth CaucasusTranscaucasusTürkiyeAlbaniaAustriaBaltic StatesBelgiumBulgariaCorseCzechia-SlovakiaDenmarkFinlandFranceGermanyGreeceHungaryIrelandItalyNetherlandsNorwayNW. Balkan Pen.PolandPortugalRomaniaSiciliaSpainSvalbardSwedenSwitzerlandTürkiye-in-EuropeUkraine Sardegna
Native distribution of Melica uniflora, 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
Albania ALB EUROPE
Austria AUT
Baltic States BLT
Belgium BGM
Bulgaria BUL
Corse COR
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
Denmark DEN
Finland FIN
France FRA
Germany GER
Great Britain GRB
Greece GRC
Hungary HUN
Ireland IRE
Italy ITA
Netherlands NET
Norway NOR
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Portugal POR
Romania ROM
Sardegna SAR
Sicilia SIC
Spain SPA
Svalbard SVA
Sweden SWE
Switzerland SWI
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
Ukraine UKR
Lebanon-Syria LBS ASIA-TEMPERATE
North Caucasus NCS
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Morocco MOR
Tunisia TUN

Not drawn on the map: Great Britain. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is listed rather than guessed at.

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.

Flowering 76 in flower of 145 examined

Proportion of examined Melica uniflora in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 0 0 too few examined
Feb 0 0 too few examined
Mar 1 1 too few examined
Apr 22 37 59% 43% to 74%
May 38 55 69% 56% to 80%
Jun 14 24 58% 39% to 76%
Jul 1 15 7% 1% to 30%
Aug 0 8 0% 0% to 32%
Sep 0 2 too few examined
Oct 0 1 too few examined
Nov 0 1 too few examined
Dec 0 1 too few examined

Peak flowering in May. Each bar is the share of Melica uniflora observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 76 of 145 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 7 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Where it actually grows measured, from 1,959 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -4.7 °C -1.1 °C 2.8 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 18.7 °C 22.2 °C 26.2 °C
Annual rainfall 574 mm 798 mm 1,405 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 98 mm 159 mm 270 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 1,959 research-grade observations of Melica uniflora 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. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 10 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.

  • Dalucum lobelianum Bubani
  • Melica lobelii Vill.
  • Melica nutans Lam.
  • Melica nutans subsp. uniflora (Retz.) Ehrh.
  • Melica uniflora f. pallida Lorenzen
  • Melica uniflora f. pilosa (Papp) W.Hempel
  • Melica uniflora var. autumnalis (Pers.) Papp
  • Melica uniflora var. leiophylla Maire & Weiller
  • Melica uniflora var. mollis Papp
  • Melica uniflora var. pilosa Papp

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.