Phalaris aquaticaL.

harding grass

WFO wfo-0000889597 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Phalaris aquatica, photographed by Garth Harwood
fig. a Garth Harwood, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-09-06 / obs. 155798389
Phalaris aquatica, photographed by Adam J. Searcy
fig. b Adam J. Searcy, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 132793744
Phalaris aquatica, photographed by Piermario Maculan
fig. c Piermario Maculan, CC0 1.0 / obs. 164190125
Phalaris aquatica, photographed by Leon Perrie
fig. d Leon Perrie, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 169642992
Phalaris aquatica, photographed by Adam J. Searcy
fig. e Adam J. Searcy, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 172208753
Phalaris aquatica, photographed by naturewatchwidow
fig. f naturewatchwidow, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 108253708
Phalaris aquatica, photographed by Thomas Mesaglio
fig. g Thomas Mesaglio, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 103853447
Phalaris aquatica, photographed by Leon Perrie
fig. h Leon Perrie, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 109404797

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 = 135 observations

Peak flowering in Jun, from 135 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 23 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.

  • Phalaris altissima Menezes
  • Phalaris aquatica var. aquatica
  • Phalaris aquatica var. hirtiglumis (Trab.) Portal
  • Phalaris aquatica var. major Willk.
  • Phalaris aquatica var. stenoptera (Hack.) Burkart
  • Phalaris arundinacea subsp. bulbosa Paunero
  • Phalaris bulbosa Ten.
  • Phalaris bulbosa var. alata (Batt. & Trab.) Maire & Weiller
  • Phalaris bulbosa var. clausonis (Maire & Trab.) Maire & Weiller
  • Phalaris bulbosa var. hirtiglumis Batt. & Trab.
  • Phalaris caespitosa Thouars
  • Phalaris elongata Braun-Blanq.
  • Phalaris hirtiglumis (Trab.) Baldini
  • Phalaris nodosa L.
  • Phalaris nodosa var. minor Lojac.
  • Phalaris stenoptera Hack.
  • Phalaris trabutiana Maire
  • Phalaris tuberosa L.
  • Phalaris tuberosa var. alata Trab.
  • Phalaris tuberosa var. clausonis Maire & Trab.
  • Phalaris tuberosa var. hirtiglumis Batt. & Trab.
  • Phalaris tuberosa var. hirtiglumis Batt. & Trab.
  • Phalaris tuberosa var. stenoptera (Hack.) Hitchc.

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.