Aureolaria flava(L.) Farw.

smooth yellow false foxglove

WFO wfo-0000557053 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Aureolaria flava, photographed by Michael J. Papay
fig. a Michael J. Papay, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-20 / obs. 199307254
Aureolaria flava, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. b Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 193343503
Aureolaria flava, photographed by Ryan Sorrells
fig. c Ryan Sorrells, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 191153235
Aureolaria flava, photographed by Leila Dasher
fig. d Leila Dasher, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 184050996
Aureolaria flava, photographed by Samuel A Schmid, PhD, PWS
fig. e Samuel A Schmid, PhD, PWS, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 155482729
Aureolaria flava, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. f Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 152074042
Aureolaria flava, photographed by Ken-ichi Ueda
fig. g Ken-ichi Ueda, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 148806667
Aureolaria flava, photographed by Ken-ichi Ueda
fig. h Ken-ichi Ueda, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 148806709

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 31 botanical countries

Regions where Aureolaria flava is native: Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Ontario, Pennsylvania, Rhode I., South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin AlabamaArkansasConnecticutFloridaGeorgiaIllinoisIndianaKentuckyLouisianaMaineMarylandMassachusettsMichiganMississippiMissouriNew HampshireNew JerseyNew YorkNorth CarolinaOhioOntarioPennsylvaniaSouth CarolinaTennesseeTexasVermontVirginiaWest VirginiaWisconsin DelawareRhode I.
Native distribution of Aureolaria flava, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Alabama ALA NORTHERN AMERICA
Arkansas ARK
Connecticut CNT
Delaware DEL
Florida FLA
Georgia GEO
Illinois ILL
Indiana INI
Kentucky KTY
Louisiana LOU
Maine MAI
Maryland MRY
Massachusetts MAS
Michigan MIC
Mississippi MSI
Missouri MSO
New Hampshire NWH
New Jersey NWJ
New York NWY
North Carolina NCA
Ohio OHI
Ontario ONT
Pennsylvania PEN
Rhode I. RHO
South Carolina SCA
Tennessee TEN
Texas TEX
Vermont VER
Virginia VRG
West Virginia WVA
Wisconsin WIS

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 170 in flower of 235 examined

Peak flowering in Aug. Each bar is the share of Aureolaria flava observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 170 of 235 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 4 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Where it actually grows measured, from 1,155 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -9.8 °C -2.3 °C 8.3 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 24.1 °C 29.8 °C 32.9 °C
Annual rainfall 946 mm 1,279 mm 1,602 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 173 mm 263 mm 336 mm

It is found where winters bring hard frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,155 research-grade observations of Aureolaria flava that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 25 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Agalinis flava (L.) B.Boivin
  • Agalinis flava var. macrantha (Pennell) B.Boivin
  • Aureolaria calycosa (Mack. & Bush) Pennell
  • Aureolaria flava subsp. macrantha (Pennell) Pennell
  • Aureolaria flava subsp. reticulata (Raf.) Pennell
  • Aureolaria flava subsp. typica Pennell
  • Aureolaria flava var. flava
  • Aureolaria flava var. integrifolia Farw.
  • Aureolaria flava var. macrantha Pennell
  • Aureolaria flava var. reticulata (Raf.) Pennell
  • Aureolaria reticulata Raf.
  • Aureolaria villosa Raf.
  • Dasistoma aurea Raf.
  • Dasistoma calycosa Mack. & Bush
  • Dasistoma calycosum Mack. & Bush
  • Dasistoma flava (L.) Alph.Wood
  • Dasistoma pubescens Benth.
  • Gerardia calycosa (Mack. & Bush) Fernald
  • Gerardia flava L.
  • Gerardia flava var. calycosa (Mack. & Bush) Steyerm.
  • Gerardia flava var. macrantha (Pennell) Fernald
  • Gerardia flava var. reticulata (Raf.) Cory
  • Gerardia villosa Muhl. ex Raf.
  • Gerardia villosa var. heterophylla Muhl.

and 1 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.