Centaurium maritimum(L.) Fritsch

WFO wfo-0000593984 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Centaurium maritimum, photographed by Josep Gesti
fig. a Josep Gesti, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-05-27 / obs. 201306876
Centaurium maritimum, photographed by Josep Gesti
fig. b Josep Gesti, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 129125504
Centaurium maritimum, photographed by Katerina Kalogerini
fig. c Katerina Kalogerini, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 70357612
Centaurium maritimum, photographed by Aissa Djamel Filali
fig. d Aissa Djamel Filali, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 40870294
Centaurium maritimum, photographed by Andre Hosper
fig. e Andre Hosper, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 34108028
Centaurium maritimum, photographed by Andre Hosper
fig. f Andre Hosper, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 35875610
Centaurium maritimum, photographed by Yves Bas
fig. g Yves Bas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 64353806
Centaurium maritimum, photographed by José Luis Camaño
fig. h José Luis Camaño, CC0 1.0 / obs. 196462871

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 24 botanical countries

Regions where Centaurium maritimum is native: Algeria, Azores, Egypt, Madeira, Morocco, Cyprus, East Aegean Is., Lebanon-Syria, Palestine, Türkiye, Albania, Baleares, Bulgaria, Corse, France, Greece, Italy, Kriti, NW. Balkan Pen., Portugal, Sardegna, Sicilia, Spain, Türkiye-in-Europe AlgeriaEgyptMoroccoCyprusEast Aegean Is.Lebanon-SyriaPalestineTürkiyeAlbaniaBulgariaCorseFranceGreeceItalyKritiNW. Balkan Pen.PortugalSiciliaSpainTürkiye-in-Europe AzoresMadeiraBalearesSardegna
Native distribution of Centaurium maritimum, 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. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Albania ALB EUROPE
Baleares BAL
Bulgaria BUL
Corse COR
France FRA
Greece GRC
Italy ITA
Kriti KRI
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Portugal POR
Sardegna SAR
Sicilia SIC
Spain SPA
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Azores AZO
Egypt EGY
Madeira MDR
Morocco MOR
Cyprus CYP ASIA-TEMPERATE
East Aegean Is. EAI
Lebanon-Syria LBS
Palestine PAL
Türkiye TUR

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 144 in flower of 150 examined

Peak flowering in Jun. Each bar is the share of Centaurium maritimum 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. 144 of 150 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 9 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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 560 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 2.2 °C 6.5 °C 11.2 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 20.4 °C 26.6 °C 32.3 °C
Annual rainfall 549 mm 758 mm 1,535 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 13 mm 59 mm 151 mm

It is found where winters are cool but frost is light or absent. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 560 research-grade observations of Centaurium maritimum that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 35 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.

  • Centaurium discolor (Gand.) Ronniger
  • Centaurium maritimum var. brevipes (Lange) Samp.
  • Centaurium maritimum var. shuttleworthianum (Rouy) P.Fourn.
  • Centaurium maritimum var. shuttleworthianum (Rouy) Melderis
  • Centaurium virescens (Willd.) Druce
  • Chironia lutea Bertol.
  • Chironia maritima (L.) Willd.
  • Chironia maritima var. angustifolia DC.
  • Chironia occidentalis DC.
  • Chironia virescens Willd. ex Steud.
  • Erythraea discolor Gand.
  • Erythraea leptina Guss.
  • Erythraea lutea (Bertol.) Roem. & Schult.
  • Erythraea maritima (L.) Pers.
  • Erythraea maritima f. angustifolia Knoche
  • Erythraea maritima f. erubescens (Willk.) Knoche
  • Erythraea maritima subsp. discolor (Gand.) Gand.
  • Erythraea maritima subsp. shuttleworthiana Rouy
  • Erythraea maritima var. angustifolia (DC.) Rouy
  • Erythraea maritima var. brevipes Lange
  • Erythraea maritima var. chrysogoni Sennen
  • Erythraea maritima var. erubescens Willk.
  • Erythraea maritima var. lutea (Roem. & Schult.) Griseb.
  • Erythraea maritima var. occidentalis (DC.) Rouy

and 11 more.

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.
  3. 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.