Brodiaea terrestris (dwarf brodiaea)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Brodiaea terrestris, photographed by P Holroyd — fig. a P Holroyd, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-29 / obs. 201993862

Brodiaea terrestris, photographed by Henrik Kibak — fig. b Henrik Kibak, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200406293

Brodiaea terrestris, photographed by paulexcoff — fig. d paulexcoff, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 205046490

Brodiaea terrestris, photographed by James C. Davis — fig. f James C. Davis, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 195129618

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 3 botanical countries

Native distribution of Brodiaea terrestris, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
California	CAL	NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Northwest	MXN
Oregon	ORE

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 1,115 in flower of 1,121 examined

100%

99%

100%

99%

100%

Proportion of examined Brodiaea terrestris in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	0	0	too few examined
Feb	0	0	too few examined
Mar	79	79	100%	95% to 100%
Apr	388	391	99%	98% to 100%
May	422	424	100%	98% to 100%
Jun	185	186	99%	97% to 100%
Jul	33	33	100%	90% to 100%
Aug	7	7	100%	65% to 100%
Sep	0	0	too few examined
Oct	1	1	too few examined
Nov	0	0	too few examined
Dec	0	0	too few examined

Peak flowering in Mar. Each bar is the share of Brodiaea terrestris 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. 1,115 of 1,121 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 6 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 8 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.

Brodiaea coronaria var. kernensis Hoover
Brodiaea coronaria var. macropoda (Torr.) Hoover
Brodiaea elegans var. australis Hoover
Brodiaea grandiflora var. macropoda Torr.
Brodiaea terrestris var. kernensis (Hoover) T.F.Niehaus
Brodiaea torreyi Alph.Wood
Hookera macropoda (Torr.) Kuntze
Hookera terrestris (Kellogg) Britton ex Greene

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.