Poa fendleriana(Steud.) Vasey

muttongrass

WFO wfo-0000892284 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Poa fendleriana, photographed by Craig Martin
fig. a Craig Martin, CC0 1.0 / 2018-04-16 / obs. 15569139

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
02633925
Filed as
Poa fendleriana (Steud.) Vasey
Det. by
K. E. Holte 1979-01-01
Collected
T. Dieffenbach 1979-07-16
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 21 botanical countries

Regions where Poa fendleriana is native: Alberta, Arizona, British Columbia, California, Colorado, Idaho, Manitoba, Mexico Northeast, Mexico Northwest, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wyoming AlbertaArizonaBritish ColumbiaCaliforniaColoradoIdahoManitobaMexico NortheastMexico NorthwestMontanaNebraskaNevadaNew MexicoNorth DakotaOklahomaOregonSouth DakotaTexasUtahWashingtonWyoming
Native distribution of Poa fendleriana, 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
Manitoba MAN
Mexico Northeast MXE
Mexico Northwest MXN
Montana MNT
Nebraska NEB
Nevada NEV
New Mexico NWM
North Dakota NDA
Oklahoma OKL
Oregon ORE
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 208 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -15.4 °C -6.5 °C -0.5 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 22.1 °C 28.4 °C 32.5 °C
Annual rainfall 220 mm 441 mm 679 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 29 mm 60 mm 116 mm

It is found where winters are severely cold. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 208 research-grade observations of Poa fendleriana 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 19 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.

  • Atropis fendleriana (Steud.) Beal
  • Eragrostis fendleriana Steud.
  • Paneion longiligulum (Scribn. & Merr.) Lunell
  • Panicularia fendleriana (Steud.) Kuntze
  • Poa andina var. major Vasey
  • Poa andina var. spicata Vasey
  • Poa brevipaniculata Scribn. & T.A.Williams
  • Poa brevipaniculata var. subpallida T.A.William
  • Poa eatonii S.Watson
  • Poa fendleriana var. arizonica T.A.William
  • Poa fendleriana var. longiligula (Scribn. & T.A.Williams) Gould
  • Poa fendleriana var. spicata (Vasey) Scribn.
  • Poa longiligula Scribn. & T.A.Williams
  • Poa longipedunculata Scribn.
  • Poa longipedunculata var. viridescens T.A.William
  • Poa montana Vasey
  • Poa scabriuscula T.A.Williams
  • Puccinellia fendleriana (Steud.) Ponert
  • Uralepis poioides Buckley

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.