Centaurea melitensisL.

Maltese star-thistle

WFO wfo-0000005385 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Centaurea melitensis, photographed by James C. Davis
fig. a James C. Davis, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-05-31 / obs. 202322925
Centaurea melitensis, photographed by Arvel Hernandez
fig. b Arvel Hernandez, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195684393
Centaurea melitensis, photographed by Jess Mullins
fig. c Jess Mullins, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201424943
Centaurea melitensis, photographed by Millie Basden
fig. d Millie Basden, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 192669441
Centaurea melitensis, photographed by Jacob Dubi
fig. e Jacob Dubi, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200860009
Centaurea melitensis, photographed by Dominic Gentilcore
fig. f Dominic Gentilcore, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199474423
Centaurea melitensis, photographed by Dutza K.
fig. g Dutza K., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195852117
Centaurea melitensis, photographed by Alexander Wentworth
fig. h Alexander Wentworth, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204924993

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 = 756 observations

Peak flowering in May, from 756 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 11 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.

  • Calcitrapa conferta Moench
  • Calcitrapa melitensis (L.) Soják
  • Calcitrapa patibilcensis Kunth
  • Calcitrapa sessiliflora Lam
  • Centaurea americana Spreng.
  • Centaurea apula Lam.
  • Centaurea congesta Willd. ex DC.
  • Centaurea glomerata Webb & Berthel.
  • Centaurea patibilcensis (Kunth) DC.
  • Centaurea reuteriana var. pinnatisecta Parsa
  • Cyanus melitensis Gaertn.

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.