Boerhavia scandens (climbing wartclub)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Boerhavia scandens, photographed by lejones417 — fig. a lejones417, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2021-08-28 / obs. 154238594

Boerhavia scandens, photographed by Andrew Tree — fig. b Andrew Tree, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 153516459

Boerhavia scandens, photographed by Daniel McNair — fig. c Daniel McNair, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 153602808

Boerhavia scandens, photographed by Eric Knight — fig. d Eric Knight, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 137735938

Boerhavia scandens, photographed by Jim Riley — fig. e Jim Riley, CC0 1.0 / obs. 102627033

Boerhavia scandens, photographed by Francisco Farriols Sarabia — fig. f Francisco Farriols Sarabia, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 36505586

Boerhavia scandens, photographed by Norman Douglas — fig. h Norman Douglas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 24998349

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 24 botanical countries

Native distribution of Boerhavia scandens, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Aruba	ARU	SOUTHERN AMERICA
Bahamas	BAH
Colombia	CLM
Cuba	CUB
Dominican Republic	DOM
Ecuador	ECU
Guatemala	GUA
Haiti	HAI
Jamaica	JAM
Leeward Is.	LEE
Netherlands Antilles	NLA
Peru	PER
Puerto Rico	PUE
Turks-Caicos Is.	TCI
Venezuela	VEN
Arizona	ARI	NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Central	MXC
Mexico Gulf	MXG
Mexico Northeast	MXE
Mexico Northwest	MXN
Mexico Southeast	MXT
Mexico Southwest	MXS
New Mexico	NWM
Texas	TEX

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 40 in flower of 50 examined

78%

90%

89%

71%

Proportion of examined Boerhavia scandens in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	1	2	too few examined
Feb	0	0	too few examined
Mar	0	2	too few examined
Apr	7	9	78%	45% to 94%
May	4	4	too few examined
Jun	2	2	too few examined
Jul	2	2	too few examined
Aug	9	10	90%	60% to 98%
Sep	8	9	89%	56% to 98%
Oct	5	7	71%	36% to 92%
Nov	0	0	too few examined
Dec	2	3	too few examined

Peak flowering in Aug. Each bar is the share of Boerhavia scandens 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. 40 of 50 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 8 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.

Also published as 3 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.

Boerhavia grahamii A.Gray
Boerhavia sarmentosa Willd.
Commicarpus scandens (L.) Standl.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
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.