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Fisher's Tundragrass — photo by James Seale

iNaturalist — CC, credited & licensed per image

Poaceae family

Fisher's Tundragrass Dupontia fisheri

Native

Also known as: Fisher's tundra grass

Fisher's Tundragrass is a perennial grass native to Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. It blooms Jul – Aug.

More about this plant

Dupontia fisheri, common name tundragrass, is a species of grass. It is native to subarctic and subalpine areas of northern Canada, plus Alaska, Greenland, Svalbard, and Asian and European Russia. Wikipedia →

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY

Size & form

Sources · Size & form

USDA PLANTS — Lifespan

TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0) — Foliage

Lifespan: Perennial
Foliage: Broadleaf

In the garden

Herb layer — Sits in the herb of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →

Rain garden / bioswale — Rated FACW on the wetland list — tolerates wet feet, so it suits the soggy zone of a rain garden or bioswale that catches and filters runoff.Open guide →

derived roles

The garden year bloom → fruit → fall colour

Bloom

Bloom (the flower's colour)

Bloom · Jul – Aug — 651 obs · USA-NPN — Nature's Notebook (CC BY 4.0)

Species characteristics from USDA PLANTS (public domain) + TRY (CC BY) — general guidance, not a guarantee for your exact site. Deer "browsing" is documented palatability, not a deer-proof claim.

Wildlife & pollinators

How pollinator value is scored →

Wildlife & visitors 1 bird

Open records of who else uses Fisher's Tundragrass — a generalist food-web signal, kept separate from the keystone Ecological Value.

Recorded eaten by 1 bird species (fruit, seed, browse):

Anser caerulescens · Snow Goose

Interaction records (observations, not exhaustive) from GloBI → (CC0). Counts are distinct species; names are the most-recorded. Common names from Wikidata (CC0).

Species thumbnails re-hosted from iNaturalist — Creative Commons, credited per image (hover for credit). Click any species to see it on iNaturalist. Not exhaustive; many taxa have no openly-licensed photo yet.

How we know this (1) Methods & honest limits

Climate niche (heat tolerance & native rainfall) Derived

We take the plant’s U.S. county range and look up each county’s long-term climate, then summarise: native rainfall = the median annual rainfall across its counties; heat tolerance = the warm end (90th percentile) of average temperature across its range (mirroring how our cold-hardiness floor uses an extreme). Counties + medians blunt the roadside/observer bias that makes point-level climate unreliable. Needs at least five placeable counties.

Honest limits: A realized, sampling-biased niche (where it has been recorded, not its physiological optimum), and county climate is coarse — large Western counties span deserts and mountains. Derived guide, never a measured fact.

Realized-niche / climate-envelope approach (Pearson & Dawson 2003; Soberón 2007). Climate: NOAA NCEI nClimDiv county normals (1991–2020).

Derived values are computed from open data by a published method — labelled, cited, and never shown as a direct observation. Full methodology →

Sources for this entry (19) Open & cited

[01] Scientific name & family — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)

[02] Growth habit & duration — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)

[03] Native status & distribution — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)

[04] Common name — USDA PLANTS (via GBIF)

[05] Invasive / introduced status — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — native status

[06] Wetland indicator — USACE National Wetland Plant List (2022)

[07] Photos — iNaturalist — CC, credited per image

[08] Description — Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)

[09] Bloom period — USA-NPN — Nature's Notebook (CC BY 4.0)

[10] Conservation rank — NatureServe Explorer (CC BY)

[11] Foliage — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)

[12] Functional traits — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)

[13] Climate niche — Derived — realized climate niche from U.S. county occurrences (GBIF) × NOAA NCEI county climate normals 1991–2020 (public domain)

[14] Wildlife & visitors — GloBI — Global Biotic Interactions (CC0)

[15] Rooting depth — Fan et al. 2017 (Dryad, CC0)

[16] Mycorrhiza — FungalRoot v2.0 · Meng et al. 2024 (Dryad, CC0)

[17] Chromosomes — ChromoDB — IAPT/IOPB chromosome data series (Zenodo, CC BY 4.0)

[18] Other common names — Wikidata (CC0)

[19] County range — GBIF Open Data — open-licensed occurrences (CC0/CC-BY) → county

Spot an error or have a better photo? Every field links to its source, and the whole dataset is open.

Cite this page Open data, please attribute

PlantKey’s data is open under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to reuse and adapt, with attribution and the same licence. Photos keep their own per-image licence + credit (see Sources above).

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Ecological value

— Not scored

No host or pollinator records yet for this taxon — we don't infer a score we can't cite.

📍 In your area live

Native to the U.S.

Recorded in 1 state.

Open occurrence records place it in 8 counties across 1 states · GBIF (CC0/CC-BY)

Native — Alaska, Canada, and Greenland

Recorded in 1 states/territories

Conservation

Conservation status G5 — Secure

Invasive? No

Wetland indicator FACW

What do these ranks mean?

NatureServe ranks risk 1–5 (1 = rarest), globally (G) and per-state (S). A species can be secure worldwide yet at risk in your state. NatureServe →

Toxicity & pet safety

Check the ASPCA pet database →

Educational, not veterinary advice. If you suspect your pet ate this plant, contact a vet or pet poison-control line.

Functional traits TRY · Dryad

Leaf nitrogen average

20.3 mg/g

leaf nitrogen — a rough guide to compost/mulch value

Heat tolerance cool-climate

Prefers cool summers

recorded mostly in cool-summer regions — may struggle in prolonged heat

Native rainfall dry

Dry (~29 in/yr)

grows where rainfall is on the low side — fairly drought-tough

Rooting depth shallow

0.3 m

shallow-rooted — relies on surface moisture

Mycorrhiza no symbiosis

Non-mycorrhizal (NM)

forms little or no mycorrhiza — feeds itself directly, so it gains less from fungal soil networks

Chromosomes cytotype variation

2n = 32, 44, 88

several cytotypes on record (2n = 32, 44, 88) — a polyploid complex; ploidy varies between populations, which often tracks with adaptability and spread

Deep dive — what these mean

Leaf nitrogen 20.3 mg/g — measured leaf N. Higher = richer prunings for compost/mulch (a measured stand-in for "dynamic accumulator" claims).

Climate niche — the rainfall & warmth of where it actually grows in the U.S., from its county range. A realized niche (where it’s recorded, not its ideal), so read it as a guide. ~29 in/yr rainfall · warm-end avg 39°F across 8 counties (GBIF × NOAA 1991–2020 normals)

Rooting depth 0.3 m — deepest documented roots. Deeper roots reach water in drought and lift nutrients from below the topsoil.

Mycorrhiza NM — the root–fungus partnership it forms (AM = most plants; ECM = most forest trees; ERM = heaths; NM = none). Trades sugars for water & nutrients via shared soil networks.

Measured traits from TRY + Werner et al. (N-fix), Fan et al. (roots) & FungalRoot — general guidance, not species-specific prescriptions.

More modules coming

Fisher's Tundragrass Dupontia fisheri

Growing & care

Wildlife & pollinators

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