Plantago elongataPursh

prairie plantain

WFO wfo-0001094834 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Plantago elongata, photographed by James C. Davis
fig. a James C. Davis, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-05-26 / obs. 200886029
Plantago elongata, photographed by Madeleine Claire
fig. b Madeleine Claire, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 181761745
Plantago elongata, photographed by J Straka
fig. c J Straka, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 129771462
Plantago elongata, photographed by Millie Basden
fig. d Millie Basden, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 117291039
Plantago elongata, photographed by Matt Berger
fig. e Matt Berger, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 66831199
Plantago elongata, photographed by Matt Lavin
fig. f Matt Lavin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 172207713
Plantago elongata, photographed by Adam J. Searcy
fig. g Adam J. Searcy, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 32497163
Plantago elongata, photographed by John A Haskins
fig. h John A Haskins, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 197973229

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
278418
Filed as
Plantago elongata subsp. elongata
Det. by
not recorded on this sheet
Collected
F. Chisaki 1959-04-30
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 22 botanical countries

Regions where Plantago elongata is native: Alberta, Arizona, British Columbia, California, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Manitoba, Mexico Northwest, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Saskatchewan, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wyoming AlbertaArizonaBritish ColumbiaCaliforniaColoradoIdahoKansasManitobaMexico NorthwestMinnesotaMontanaNebraskaNew MexicoNorth DakotaOklahomaOregonSaskatchewanSouth DakotaTexasUtahWashingtonWyoming
Native distribution of Plantago elongata, 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
Alberta ABT NORTHERN AMERICA
Arizona ARI
British Columbia BRC
California CAL
Colorado COL
Idaho IDA
Kansas KAN
Manitoba MAN
Mexico Northwest MXN
Minnesota MIN
Montana MNT
Nebraska NEB
New Mexico NWM
North Dakota NDA
Oklahoma OKL
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 387 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -9.3 °C 5.0 °C 10.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 15.3 °C 25.9 °C 36.9 °C
Annual rainfall 254 mm 522 mm 1,297 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 4 mm 15 mm 130 mm

It is found where winters bring hard 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 387 research-grade observations of Plantago elongata 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 13 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.

  • Plantago bigelovii A.Gray
  • Plantago bigelovii subsp. californica (Greene) Bassett
  • Plantago californica Greene
  • Plantago elongata subsp. elongata
  • Plantago elongata subsp. pentasperma Bassett
  • Plantago elongata var. bigelovii (A.Gray) B.Boivin
  • Plantago elongata var. californica (Greene) B.Boivin
  • Plantago elongata var. elongata
  • Plantago elongata var. pentasperma (Bassett) B.Boivin
  • Plantago hookeriana var. californica (Greene) Poe
  • Plantago linearifolia Muhl. ex Torr.
  • Plantago myosuroides Rydb.
  • Plantago patagonica var. rosulata Jeps.

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.