Centaurea cyanusL.

Cornflower

WFO wfo-0000008997 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Centaurea cyanus, photographed by Daniel S.
fig. a Daniel S., CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-11 / obs. 205336211
Centaurea cyanus, photographed by goldfjnch
fig. b goldfjnch, CC0 1.0 / obs. 205535382
Centaurea cyanus, photographed by Jason Grant
fig. c Jason Grant, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204452936
Centaurea cyanus, photographed by Alan Young
fig. d Alan Young, CC0 1.0 / obs. 205116365
Centaurea cyanus, photographed by Jais Knudsen
fig. e Jais Knudsen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205208983
Centaurea cyanus, photographed by Yann Kemper
fig. f Yann Kemper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 204371745
Centaurea cyanus, photographed by Yann Kemper
fig. g Yann Kemper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 204127523
Centaurea cyanus, photographed by Petr Harant
fig. h Petr Harant, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204423847

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.

Flowering n = 4,220 observations

Peak flowering in Jun, from 4,220 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 21 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.

  • Centaurea concinna Trautv.
  • Centaurea concinna Steud.
  • Centaurea cyaneum St.-Lag.
  • Centaurea cyanocephala Velen.
  • Centaurea cyanus subsp. coa Rech.f.
  • Centaurea cyanus subsp. cyanus
  • Centaurea cyanus var. cyanus
  • Centaurea cyanus var. denudata Suksd.
  • Centaurea lanata Roxb.
  • Centaurea pulcherrima Wight ex DC.
  • Centaurea pulchra DC.
  • Centaurea rhizocephala Trautv.
  • Centaurea segetalis Salisb.
  • Centaurea umbrosa A.Huet ex Reut.
  • Cyanus arvensis Moench
  • Cyanus cyanus Hill
  • Cyanus dentato-folius Gilib.
  • Cyanus segetum Hill
  • Cyanus vulgaris Delarbre
  • Jacea segetum Lam.
  • Leucacantha cyanus Nieuwl. & Lunell

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.