Blackstonia perfoliata(L.) Huds.

WFO wfo-0000566247 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Blackstonia perfoliata, photographed by Pete Bradshaw
fig. a Pete Bradshaw, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-10 / obs. 204962641

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 34 botanical countries

Regions where Blackstonia perfoliata is native: Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Cyprus, East Aegean Is., Iraq, Lebanon-Syria, Palestine, Sinai, Türkiye, Albania, Austria, Baleares, Belgium, Bulgaria, Corse, Czechia-Slovakia, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Kriti, Krym, Netherlands, NW. Balkan Pen., Portugal, Sardegna, Sicilia, Spain, Switzerland, Türkiye-in-Europe AlgeriaMoroccoTunisiaCyprusEast Aegean Is.IraqLebanon-SyriaPalestineSinaiTürkiyeAlbaniaAustriaBelgiumBulgariaCorseCzechia-SlovakiaFranceGermanyGreeceHungaryIrelandItalyKritiKrymNetherlandsNW. Balkan Pen.PortugalSiciliaSpainSwitzerlandTürkiye-in-Europe BalearesSardegna
Native distribution of Blackstonia perfoliata, 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
Albania ALB EUROPE
Austria AUT
Baleares BAL
Belgium BGM
Bulgaria BUL
Corse COR
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
France FRA
Germany GER
Great Britain GRB
Greece GRC
Hungary HUN
Ireland IRE
Italy ITA
Kriti KRI
Krym KRY
Netherlands NET
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Portugal POR
Sardegna SAR
Sicilia SIC
Spain SPA
Switzerland SWI
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
Cyprus CYP ASIA-TEMPERATE
East Aegean Is. EAI
Iraq IRQ
Lebanon-Syria LBS
Palestine PAL
Sinai SIN
Türkiye TUR
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Morocco MOR
Tunisia TUN

Not drawn on the map: Great Britain. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is listed rather than guessed at.

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 501 in flower of 620 examined

Proportion of examined Blackstonia perfoliata in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 6 8 75% 41% to 93%
Feb 4 5 80% 38% to 96%
Mar 4 5 80% 38% to 96%
Apr 13 29 45% 28% to 62%
May 114 151 76% 68% to 82%
Jun 199 225 88% 84% to 92%
Jul 65 83 78% 68% to 86%
Aug 25 34 74% 57% to 85%
Sep 16 17 94% 73% to 99%
Oct 24 27 89% 72% to 96%
Nov 18 21 86% 65% to 95%
Dec 13 15 87% 62% to 96%

Peak flowering in Sep. Each bar is the share of Blackstonia perfoliata 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. 501 of 620 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 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 2,080 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -1.7 °C 2.3 °C 9.5 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 17.9 °C 23.2 °C 29.4 °C
Annual rainfall 582 mm 837 mm 1,415 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 35 mm 151 mm 248 mm

It is found where winters bring light 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 2,080 research-grade observations of Blackstonia perfoliata 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 26 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.

  • Blackstonia glandiflora Pau
  • Blackstonia intermedia (Ten.) Sennen ex Martínez
  • Blackstonia perfoliata f. intermedia (Ten.) A.Robyns
  • Blackstonia perfoliata f. ochroleuca (H.Lindb.) Maire
  • Blackstonia perfoliata var. longidens (H.Lindb.) Maire
  • Centaurium perfoliatum E.H.L.Krause
  • Chironia perfoliata (L.) Salisb.
  • Chlora citrina var. ternata Borbás
  • Chlora intermedia Ten.
  • Chlora mascariensis Desf. ex Steud.
  • Chlora perfoliata (L.) L.
  • Chlora perfoliata f. ochroleuca H.Lindb.
  • Chlora perfoliata subsp. intermedia (Ten.) Nyman
  • Chlora perfoliata var. acuminata Griseb.
  • Chlora perfoliata var. compacta Lange
  • Chlora perfoliata var. longidens H.Lindb.
  • Chlora perfoliata var. minor Ten.
  • Chlora perfoliata var. pusilla Gaudin
  • Chlora perfoliata var. sessilifolia Griseb.
  • Chlora sicula Tineo ex Guss.
  • Chlora sicula Tineo
  • Gentiana perfoliata L.
  • Pleurimaria mascariensis Raf.
  • Pleurimaria perfoliata (L.) Raf.

and 2 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. 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.