Plant Wiki

The open plant encyclopedia

Know any plant.
Grow it well.

Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.

  • 13,000+plants with full pages
  • 365,000+plant species worldwide
  • 220+countries covered

Common in

See all

The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.

What do you want to do?

Popular plants

Browse all plants

See them in 3D

All plants in 3D

Browse plants

Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.

Plant Wiki › Browse plants

Svenson's wildrye

Elymus svensonii

Also called Svenson's Wild Rye

Svenson's wildrye
Photo: Mason Brock (Masebrock), Public domain

Svenson's wildrye is a rare perennial bunchgrass native to dry, rocky limestone bluffs in Kentucky and Tennessee, where it grows on steep cliff faces. It is a wild species rarely grown in gardens, so cultivation advice is limited.

Family
Poaceae (Grass family)
Grows as
Grass, Perennial
Light
Part shade
Water
Water sparingly once established; it tolerates dry conditions in the wild.
Soil
Well-drained, rocky or gritty soil, ideally with some limestone.
Temperature
Hardy in temperate climates; tolerates cold winters and summer heat typical of its native range.
How easy
Moderate
Native range
EC. U.S.A.
Climate
temperate

About

Elymus svensonii, commonly called Svenson's wildrye, is a species of flowering plant in the grass family (Poaceae). It is native to United States, where it is endemic to the Interior Low Plateau of Kentucky and Tennessee. Its natural habitat is on dry, rocky, limestone river bluffs.

It is a rare species, with a restricted range and narrow suitable habitat. Because of these reasons it is considered to be "Vulnerable" (G3) by NatureServe. However, estimating population size is difficult due to its habitat on sheer cliffs, which are dangerous for researchers to access. It is possible that in hard-to-reach areas, populations may be reasonably large.

Other Elymus plants

Alaskan wheatgrass · Thinopyrum acutum · California bottlebrush grass · Canada wildrye · Bearded wheatgrass · Campeiostachys dahurica · Squirreltail · Blue wildrye · RS wheatgrass · Eastern bottlebrush grass · Thickspike wheatgrass · Early wildrye

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Elymus svensonii by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.

The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.

Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.

Credits & terms

Identify a plant

Point at a leaf or flower and snap. One plant in frame works best.

Your photo
Starting camera…