United States / Grow / tall oatgrass

tall oatgrass (Arrhenatherum elatius)
Photo: (c) Ella Rowan, some rights reserved (CC BY) (CC BY), via iNaturalist. Species-typical, not necessarily this cultivar.

tall oatgrass

Arrhenatherum elatius · Poaceae · also called Tall oat-grass, False oat-grass · Wikipedia

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Is this one for your yard?

Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.

Form
grass
Mature height
~4 ft
Water need
moderate
Rated in
New Zealand
Uses
pasture
On this lot

1. Fire evidence and conditions

Fire evidence
Mixed evidence — location does not change the cited classification.
Evidence regions
New Zealand

2. Why this plant is relevant here

State distribution
Documented in AK, AL, AR, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DC, DE, GA, HI, IA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, MS, MT, NC, NE, NH, NJ, NM, NV, NY, OH, OR, PA, RI, SD, TN, UT, VA, VT, WA, WI, WV, WY.
Introduced / established
46 sourced range or established records. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 3a; no upper limit is documented.

3. Legal, ecological, and broader status

Reported invasive here
3 ecological invasive reports.
How to read this page

The status above is computed from the cited rows below: independent recommendations can support a fire-resistant result, an avoid row can produce keep-away, and disagreement stays visible as conflict. Placement notes preserve each source’s own scheme rather than translating unlike rules into one scale. This is evidence about a plant, not permission to plant it in every part of the defensible space; Zone 0 remains noncombustible.

Native and introduced range evidence

These are exact U.S. botanical-area records from the cited range source. Native and introduced describe biogeographic relationship, not fire performance or planting approval. Doubtful and extinct rows stay visible but do not count as current presence.

Current native

0

exact source areas

Current introduced

46

exact source areas

Qualified

0

doubtful or extinct source rows

46 introduced source areas · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04
  • Alaska (AK)
  • Alabama (AL)
  • Arkansas (AR)
  • Arizona (AZ)
  • California (CA)
  • Colorado (CO)
  • Connecticut (CT)
  • District of Columbia (DC)
  • Delaware (DE)
  • Georgia (GA)
  • Hawaii (HI)
  • Iowa (IA)
  • Idaho (ID)
  • Illinois (IL)
  • Indiana (IN)
  • Kansas (KS)
  • Kentucky (KY)
  • Louisiana (LA)
  • Massachusetts (MA)
  • Maryland (MD)
  • Maine (ME)
  • Michigan (MI)
  • Minnesota (MN)
  • Missouri (MO)
  • Mississippi (MS)
  • Montana (MT)
  • North Carolina (NC)
  • Nebraska (NE)
  • New Hampshire (NH)
  • New Jersey (NJ)
  • New Mexico (NM)
  • Nevada (NV)
  • New York (NY)
  • Ohio (OH)
  • Oregon (OR)
  • Pennsylvania (PA)
  • Rhode I. (RI)
  • South Dakota (SD)
  • Tennessee (TN)
  • Utah (UT)
  • Virginia (VA)
  • Vermont (VT)
  • Washington (WA)
  • Wisconsin (WI)
  • West Virginia (WV)
  • Wyoming (WY)

The lossless worldwide derivative is retained once in the research corpus; object pages repeat only exact U.S. areas needed by the local lens. The JSON twin carries the same page assertions.

Plant hardiness evidence

These values describe the plant source. Your ZIP zone comes from the separate 2023 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map. Whole-zone values stay whole-zone, and a single unresolved value is not treated as a tolerance range. Different source boundaries stay separate: overlapping statements are compared independently, while only ranges with no shared zone are called a conflict.

The evidence

Grouped by what each source concluded. Primary evidence rated the plant itself (a lab, field program, or original curation); corroboration compiled or republished another source's rating and resolves to its root lineage.

Mid-scale / conditional (1)

Fire-resistant grasss instead

Last verified 2026-08-23. JSON (CC BY 4.0)

Profiles: USDA PLANTS · GBIF · iNaturalist · Wikidata · Wikipedia · ITIS

Arrhenatherum elatius (Tall oat-grass, False oat-grass). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/arrhenatherum-elatius/. Last verified 2026-08-23.