Phragmites australis(Cav.) Steud.

common reed

WFO wfo-0000890172 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Phragmites australis, photographed by Юрий Данилевский (Yuriy Danilevsky)
fig. a Юрий Данилевский (Yuriy Danilevsky), CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-12 / obs. 205790765
Phragmites australis, photographed by Greg Tasney
fig. b Greg Tasney, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 205376856
Phragmites australis, photographed by Yurii Basov
fig. c Yurii Basov, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202913290
Phragmites australis, photographed by Юрий Данилевский (Yuriy Danilevsky)
fig. d Юрий Данилевский (Yuriy Danilevsky), CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205790112
Phragmites australis, photographed by Radosław Puchałka
fig. e Radosław Puchałka, CC0 1.0 / obs. 204624609
Phragmites australis, photographed by Anastasia_Surkova
fig. f Anastasia_Surkova, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205902551
Phragmites australis, photographed by Yann Kemper
fig. g Yann Kemper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 203950728
Phragmites australis, photographed by Zakqary Roy
fig. h Zakqary Roy, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204957527

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 = 4,187 observations

Peak flowering in Sep, from 4,187 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 189 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.

  • Arundo aggerum Kit.
  • Arundo altissima Benth.
  • Arundo australis Cav.
  • Arundo barbata Burch.
  • Arundo donax Forssk.
  • Arundo filiformis Hassk.
  • Arundo flexuosa Brongn.
  • Arundo graeca Link
  • Arundo isiaca Delile
  • Arundo maxima Forssk.
  • Arundo naga J.Koenig ex Steud.
  • Arundo nigricans Mérat
  • Arundo occidentalis Sieber ex Schult.
  • Arundo palustris Salisb.
  • Arundo phragmites L.
  • Arundo phragmites f. salsa Podp.
  • Arundo phragmites prol. maxima P.Fourn.
  • Arundo phragmites var. flavescens (Custer) Asch.
  • Arundo phragmites var. gracilis Mérat
  • Arundo phragmites var. isiaca Griseb.
  • Arundo phragmites var. nigricans (Mérat) Bréb.
  • Arundo phragmites var. pumila G.Mey.
  • Arundo phragmites var. rivularis Griseb.
  • Arundo phragmites var. stenophylla (Boiss.) Asch. & Graebn.

and 165 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.

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.