Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations
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 18 botanical countries
| Region | TDWG code | Continent |
|---|---|---|
| Alabama | ALA | NORTHERN AMERICA |
| Connecticut | CNT | |
| Delaware | DEL | |
| Florida | FLA | |
| Georgia | GEO | |
| Illinois | ILL | |
| Indiana | INI | |
| Louisiana | LOU | |
| Maryland | MRY | |
| Massachusetts | MAS | |
| Mississippi | MSI | |
| New Jersey | NWJ | |
| New York | NWY | |
| North Carolina | NCA | |
| Ohio | OHI | |
| Pennsylvania | PEN | |
| Texas | TEX | |
| Virginia | VRG |
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 338 observations
| Condition | 5th percentile | Median | 95th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coldest month, mean daily low | -6.0 °C | 13.5 °C | 16.6 °C |
| Warmest month, mean daily high | 24.8 °C | 28.8 °C | 30.6 °C |
| Annual rainfall | 706 mm | 887 mm | 1,268 mm |
| Rainfall in the driest quarter | 110 mm | 164 mm | 276 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 338 research-grade observations of Schizachyrium littorale 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 Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.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 5 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.
- Andropogon littoralis Nash
- Andropogon scoparius var. ducis Fernald & Griscom
- Andropogon scoparius var. littoralis (Nash) Hitchc.
- Schizachyrium scoparium subsp. littorale (Nash) Gandhi & Smeins
- Schizachyrium scoparium var. littorale (Nash) Gould
Sourcesevery claim on this page
- World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
- iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
- USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol SCLI11. public domain. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
- 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.