Caulophyllum giganteum(Farw.) H.Loconte & W.H.Blackw.

early blue cohosh

WFO wfo-0000591219 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Caulophyllum giganteum, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. a Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / 2022-05-08 / obs. 196076733
Caulophyllum giganteum, photographed by Jake McCumber
fig. b Jake McCumber, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 196641064
Caulophyllum giganteum, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. c Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 196071519
Caulophyllum giganteum, photographed by Micki Colbeck
fig. d Micki Colbeck, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 194789725
Caulophyllum giganteum, photographed by Cecil Smith
fig. e Cecil Smith, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199781045
Caulophyllum giganteum, photographed by Ian Whyte
fig. f Ian Whyte, CC0 1.0 / obs. 195439769
Caulophyllum giganteum, photographed by Michael J. Papay
fig. g Michael J. Papay, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 193223278
Caulophyllum giganteum, photographed by jyoung2399
fig. h jyoung2399, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 194900492

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.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 2,253 observations

Peak flowering in Apr, from 2,253 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 1 synonym

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.

  • Caulophyllum thalictroides var. giganteum Farw.

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.

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