Phragmites
Phragmites is a genus of six species of large perennial reed grasses found in wetlands throughout temperate and tropical regions of the world.

Peter O'Connor aka anemoneprojectors from Stevenage, United Kingdom · CC BY-SA 2.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Also called
- common reedPBDB
- Sits inside
- PoaceaePBDB
- Diet
- "photoautotroph"PBDB, for Angiospermae
Time the record covers
At least 96 million years on record.
The record covers at least 100.5 Mya to 3.6 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 143.1 Mya to 11.7 ka.
38 occurrences of Phragmites on record, most of them in the Miocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
38 occurrencesThese are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
15 formations
- Itahana Formation · Tomioka Group6
- Yagii Formation2
- Ogawa Formation2
- Black Creek Formation2
- Chu Chua Formation · Kamloops Group2
- Nagaiwa Formation1
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The named rock units Phragmites has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 14 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Phragmites and its relatives
MioceneWhere Phragmites and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
430 taxa- Alnus12 sites
- Acer11 sites
- Bambusites10 sites
- Metasequoia occidentalis9 sites
- Salix9 sites
- Zelkova ungeri9 sites
- Carex8 sites
- Ulmus8 sites
- Carpinus6 sites
- Persea6 sites
- Quercus6 sites
- Caesalpinia5 sites
- Cinnamomum5 sites
- Ficus tiliaefolia5 sites
- Ostrya5 sites
- Populus5 sites
- Pseudotsuga5 sites
- Quercus protosalicina5 sites
- Spiraea5 sites
- Acer protomiyabei4 sites
- Betula4 sites
- Castanea4 sites
- Celtis4 sites
- Cladrastis4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 35 sites for Phragmites, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
18 references- Late Miocene and Pliocene Floras in Central Honshu, Japan12
- A catalogue of Cenozoic megafossil plants in China3
- Kleinsäugerstratigraphie in der miozänen Hörnlischüttung (Ostschweiz); (Biostratigraphy of small mammals in the Hörnlischüttung of Miocene age (East Switzerland))3
- The Upper Cretaceous and Eocene floras of South Carolina and Georgia3
- Die mittelmiozaenen und obermiozaenen Floren aus der Meuroer und Raunoer Folge in der Lausitz. III. Fundstellen und Palaeobiologie2
- Tertiary floras from British Columbia2
- Fossil Flora of the Yellowstone National Park2
- The record of the Messinian salinity crisis in the Tertiary Piedmont Basin (NW Italy): The Alba section revisited1
- Die pliozaenen Floren von Thueringen, Deutsche Demokratische Republik1
- Miocene floras of the Pacific side of central Japan (I) Inkyoyama flora1
- The Metzel Ranch Flora of the Upper Ruby River Basin, Southwestern Montana1
- Fossil Plants of the Tertiary Beaverhead Basins in Southwestern Montana1
Each of the 38 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 6 further references are not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Phragmites
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Peter O'Connor aka anemoneprojectors from Stevenage, United Kingdom
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC0 Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Phragmites”
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itPoaceae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Adanson 1763