Poa annuaL.

Annual Meadow-grass

WFO wfo-0000891536 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Poa annua, photographed by Jenny Saito
fig. a Jenny Saito, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-05 / obs. 203747370
Poa annua, photographed by Grzegorz Grzejszczak
fig. b Grzegorz Grzejszczak, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 203785072
Poa annua, photographed by Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas
fig. c Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204319333
Poa annua, photographed by Yann Kemper
fig. d Yann Kemper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 202488208
Poa annua, photographed by Stephen James McWilliam
fig. e Stephen James McWilliam, CC0 1.0 / obs. 201666793
Poa annua, photographed by Rafael Medina
fig. f Rafael Medina, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199432207
Poa annua, photographed by Anastasia_Surkova
fig. g Anastasia_Surkova, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199838098
Poa annua, photographed by Stephen James McWilliam
fig. h Stephen James McWilliam, CC0 1.0 / obs. 198930372

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 = 1,084 observations

Peak flowering in Apr, from 1,084 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 60 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.

  • Aira pumila Pursh
  • Catabrosa pumila (Pursh) Roem. & Schult.
  • Festuca tenuiculmis Tovar
  • Ochlopoa annua (L.) H.Scholz
  • Ochlopoa annua subsp. notabilis (Chrtek & V.Jirásek) H.Scholz & Valdés
  • Ochlopoa annua subsp. pilantha (Ronniger) H.Scholz & Valdés
  • Ochlopoa annua subsp. raniglumis (S.E.Fröhner) H.Scholz & Valdés
  • Ochlopoa notabilis (Chrtek & V.Jirásek) Tzvelev
  • Ochlopoa pilantha (Ronniger) Tzvelev
  • Ochlopoa raniglumis (S.E.Fröhner) Bomble
  • Poa aestivalis J.Presl
  • Poa algida Trin.
  • Poa annua f. annua
  • Poa annua f. lanuginosa Sennen
  • Poa annua f. latisquamea Lindm.
  • Poa annua f. longiglumis Lindm.
  • Poa annua f. ovalis (Tineo) Trab.
  • Poa annua f. purpurea Mike L.Grant
  • Poa annua f. reptans (Hausskn.) T.Koyama
  • Poa annua subsp. annua
  • Poa annua subsp. mutabilis Chrtek & V.Jirásek
  • Poa annua subsp. notabilis Chrtek & V.Jirásek
  • Poa annua subsp. pilantha (Ronniger) H.Scholz
  • Poa annua subsp. raniglumis (S.E.Fröhner) Chrtek

and 36 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.