Puccinellia maritima(Huds.) Parl.

seaside alkaligrass

WFO wfo-0000895389 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Puccinellia maritima, photographed by Michel Langeveld
fig. a Michel Langeveld, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-07-20 / obs. 145616380
Puccinellia maritima, photographed by Robert H. Wardell
fig. b Robert H. Wardell, CC0 1.0 / obs. 95342010
Puccinellia maritima, photographed by Robert H. Wardell
fig. c Robert H. Wardell, CC0 1.0 / obs. 94780471
Puccinellia maritima, photographed by Stephen James McWilliam
fig. d Stephen James McWilliam, CC0 1.0 / obs. 50522253
Puccinellia maritima, photographed by Jon Mortin
fig. e Jon Mortin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 171215185
Puccinellia maritima, photographed by Steven Cross
fig. f Steven Cross, CC0 1.0 / obs. 191488764
Puccinellia maritima, photographed by Robert H. Wardell
fig. g Robert H. Wardell, CC0 1.0 / obs. 96432581
Puccinellia maritima, photographed by Robert H. Wardell
fig. h Robert H. Wardell, CC0 1.0 / obs. 84589159

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.

Native range 17 botanical countries

Regions where Puccinellia maritima is native: Canary Is., Baltic States, Belgium, Denmark, Føroyar, France, Germany, Great Britain, Iceland, Ireland, Netherlands, North European Russia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden Baltic StatesBelgiumDenmarkFranceGermanyIcelandIrelandNetherlandsNorth European RussiaNorwayPolandPortugalSpainSweden Canary Is.Føroyar
Native distribution of Puccinellia maritima, 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
Baltic States BLT EUROPE
Belgium BGM
Denmark DEN
Føroyar FOR
France FRA
Germany GER
Great Britain GRB
Iceland ICE
Ireland IRE
Netherlands NET
North European Russia RUN
Norway NOR
Poland POL
Portugal POR
Spain SPA
Sweden SWE
Canary Is. CNY AFRICA

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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 95 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 1.6 °C 3.7 °C 5.6 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 17.3 °C 19.4 °C 21.3 °C
Annual rainfall 751 mm 830 mm 1,269 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 136 mm 149 mm 216 mm

It is found where winters are cool but frost is light or absent. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 95 research-grade observations of Puccinellia maritima 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 59 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 beltranii Sennen
  • Atropis distans var. maritima (Huds.) Coss. & Durieu
  • Atropis foucaudii Hack. ex Fouc.
  • Atropis intermedia var. arenaria Schur
  • Atropis intermedia var. pseudomaritima Schur
  • Atropis maritima (Huds.) Griseb.
  • Atropis pseudomaritima (Schur) Schur
  • Atropis transsilvanica Schur
  • Catabrosa maritima (Huds.) Link
  • Diachroa maritima Nutt. ex Steud.
  • Festuca distans var. maritima (Huds.) Mutel
  • Festuca maritima (Huds.) K.Koch
  • Festuca thalassica Kunth
  • Festuca thalassica var. anomala Lange
  • Glyceria baltica Lindeb.
  • Glyceria baltica f. setacea Lindeb.
  • Glyceria baltica f. vegetior Lindeb.
  • Glyceria baumgarteniana Schur
  • Glyceria distans var. maritima (Huds.) Vicq & De Brutelette
  • Glyceria dusenii Lindeb.
  • Glyceria maritima (Huds.) Wahlenb.
  • Glyceria maritima subvar. subcaespitosa Druce
  • Glyceria maritima var. amethystina G.Mey.
  • Glyceria maritima var. arenaria Fr.

and 35 more.

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.