- Plants
- ›Vascular Plants
- ›flowering plants
- ›Dicots
- ›pinks, cactuses, and allies
- ›knotweed family
- ›Polygonoideae
- ›Polygoneae
- ›Polygoninae
- ›Polygonum
- ›Polygonum

Common Knotgrass Complex
Polygonum aviculare
Polygonum aviculare or common knotgrass is a plant related to buckwheat and dock. It is also called prostrate knotweed, birdweed, pigweed and lowgrass. It is an annual found in fields and wasteland, with white flowers from June to October. It is widespread across many countries in temperate regions, apparently native to Eurasia, naturalized in temperate parts of the Southern Hemisphere.
8 branches of this group, most-observed first

Prostrate Knotweed
speciesPolygonum aviculare

Oval Leaf Knotweed
speciesPolygonum arenastrum

cornfield knotweed
speciesPolygonum rurivagum

Polygonum graminifolium
speciesPolygonum graminifolium

Northern Knotgrass
speciesPolygonum boreale

Polygonum caspicum
speciesPolygonum caspicum
Polygonum sabulosum
speciesPolygonum sabulosum
Polygonum rigidum
speciesPolygonum rigidum
Where it lives
Recorded sightings
—
geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.
Drag the globe to turn it. Dots are where records exist, not a range map; darker means more records.
In the old herbals & bestiaries
In the stacks
Searching the stacks…
Every page naming Polygonum aviculare in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →
This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 1290817.

