Carlowrightia arizonica (Arizona wrightwort)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Carlowrightia arizonica, photographed by Zoltán Stekkelpak — fig. a Zoltán Stekkelpak, CC0 1.0 / 2022-02-17 / obs. 179769772

Carlowrightia arizonica, photographed by Bill Levine — fig. b Bill Levine, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 168557947

Carlowrightia arizonica, photographed by weaver — fig. c weaver, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 72999112

Carlowrightia arizonica, photographed by Francisco Farriols Sarabia — fig. d Francisco Farriols Sarabia, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 56523059

Carlowrightia arizonica, photographed by José Belem Hernández Díaz — fig. e José Belem Hernández Díaz, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 29417029

Carlowrightia arizonica, photographed by Alexis López Hernández — fig. f Alexis López Hernández, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 6292122

Carlowrightia arizonica, photographed by Roger Rittmaster — fig. g Roger Rittmaster, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 112713897

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 13 botanical countries

Native distribution of Carlowrightia arizonica, 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
Arizona	ARI	NORTHERN AMERICA
California	CAL
Mexico Central	MXC
Mexico Northeast	MXE
Mexico Northwest	MXN
Mexico Southeast	MXT
Mexico Southwest	MXS
Texas	TEX
Costa Rica	COS	SOUTHERN AMERICA
El Salvador	ELS
Guatemala	GUA
Honduras	HON
Nicaragua	NIC

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 165 in flower of 267 examined

39%

28%

58%

96%

77%

67%

63%

73%

53%

Proportion of examined Carlowrightia arizonica in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	9	23	39%	22% to 59%
Feb	19	67	28%	19% to 40%
Mar	14	24	58%	39% to 76%
Apr	53	55	96%	88% to 99%
May	40	52	77%	64% to 86%
Jun	4	6	67%	30% to 90%
Jul	0	0	too few examined
Aug	0	0	too few examined
Sep	2	2	too few examined
Oct	5	8	63%	31% to 86%
Nov	11	15	73%	48% to 89%
Dec	8	15	53%	30% to 75%

Peak flowering in Apr. Each bar is the share of Carlowrightia arizonica 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. 165 of 267 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 3 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.

Carlowrightia californica Brandegee
Carlowrightia californica var. pallida I.M.Johnst.
Carlowrightia cordifolia A.Gray
Carlowrightia costaricana Leonard
Carlowrightia coyucana Leonard
Carlowrightia glabrata Fernald
Carlowrightia mucronata Leonard
Justicia alba Sessé & Moc.

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.