Microstegium japonicum(Miq.) Koidz.

WFO wfo-0000879980 Accepted WFO 2026-06 6 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–f · 1 observation

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 1 time, 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.

Microstegium japonicum, photographed by Jacy Chen
fig. a Jacy Chen, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-11-29 / obs. 174816243
Microstegium japonicum, photographed by Jacy Chen
fig. b Jacy Chen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 174816225
Microstegium japonicum, photographed by Jacy Chen
fig. c Jacy Chen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 174816178
Microstegium japonicum, photographed by Jacy Chen
fig. d Jacy Chen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 174816215
Microstegium japonicum, photographed by Jacy Chen
fig. e Jacy Chen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 174816190
Microstegium japonicum, photographed by Jacy Chen
fig. f Jacy Chen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 174816200

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
391990
Filed as
Microstegium japonicum (Miq.) Koidz.
Det. by
I. Chung 1953-01-01
Collected
C. Wright
Origin
JP
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 5 botanical countries

Regions where Microstegium japonicum is native: China South-Central, China Southeast, Japan, Korea, Taiwan China South-CentralChina SoutheastJapanTaiwan Korea
Native distribution of Microstegium japonicum, 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
China South-Central CHC ASIA-TEMPERATE
China Southeast CHS
Japan JAP
Korea KOR
Taiwan TAI

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.

Also published as 14 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.

  • Leptatherum boreale (Ohwi) C.Hui Chen, Kuoh & Veldkamp
  • Leptatherum japonicum (Miq.) Franch. & Sav.
  • Leptatherum japonicum var. boreale (Ohwi) Ibaragi & Yonek.
  • Leptatherum somae (Hayata) C.Hui Chen, Kuoh & Veldkamp
  • Microstegium boreale Ohwi
  • Microstegium japonicum f. shimidzui (Honda) Ohwi
  • Microstegium japonicum subsp. somae (Hayata) T.Koyama
  • Microstegium japonicum var. boreale (Ohwi) Ohwi
  • Microstegium nudum subsp. japonicum (Miq.) Tzvelev
  • Microstegium nudum var. boreale (Ohwi) Ohwi
  • Microstegium nudum var. shimidzui Honda
  • Microstegium somae (Hayata) Ohwi
  • Pollinia japonica Miq.
  • Polliniopsis somae Hayata

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. 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.