Centaurium tenuiflorum(Hoffmanns. & Link) Fritsch

slender centaury

WFO wfo-0000594064 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Centaurium tenuiflorum, photographed by Samuel A Schmid, PhD, PWS
fig. a Samuel A Schmid, PhD, PWS, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-30 / obs. 201969239

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 36 botanical countries

Regions where Centaurium tenuiflorum is native: Algeria, Azores, Canary Is., Cape Verde, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Madeira, Morocco, Socotra, Tunisia, Cyprus, East Aegean Is., Iran, Iraq, Lebanon-Syria, Palestine, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, Pakistan, West Himalaya, Albania, Baleares, Corse, France, Great Britain, Greece, Italy, Kriti, Krym, NW. Balkan Pen., Portugal, Sardegna, Sicilia, Spain, Türkiye-in-Europe AlgeriaChadEgyptLibyaMoroccoTunisiaCyprusEast Aegean Is.IranIraqLebanon-SyriaPalestineTranscaucasusTürkiyePakistanWest HimalayaAlbaniaCorseFranceGreeceItalyKritiKrymNW. Balkan Pen.PortugalSiciliaSpainTürkiye-in-Europe AzoresCanary Is.Cape VerdeMadeiraBalearesSardegna
Native distribution of Centaurium tenuiflorum, 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
Corse COR
France FRA
Great Britain GRB
Greece GRC
Italy ITA
Kriti KRI
Krym KRY
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Portugal POR
Sardegna SAR
Sicilia SIC
Spain SPA
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Azores AZO
Canary Is. CNY
Cape Verde CVI
Chad CHA
Egypt EGY
Libya LBY
Madeira MDR
Morocco MOR
Socotra SOC
Tunisia TUN
Cyprus CYP ASIA-TEMPERATE
East Aegean Is. EAI
Iran IRN
Iraq IRQ
Lebanon-Syria LBS
Palestine PAL
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR
Pakistan PAK ASIA-TROPICAL
West Himalaya WHM

Not drawn on the map: Socotra, Great Britain. We hold no public-domain boundary for these regions, so they are listed rather than guessed at.

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 204 in flower of 207 examined

Proportion of examined Centaurium tenuiflorum in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 9 9 100% 70% to 100%
Feb 6 6 100% 61% to 100%
Mar 6 6 100% 61% to 100%
Apr 5 6 83% 44% to 97%
May 30 30 100% 89% to 100%
Jun 48 48 100% 93% to 100%
Jul 38 38 100% 91% to 100%
Aug 15 15 100% 80% to 100%
Sep 6 6 100% 61% to 100%
Oct 7 7 100% 65% to 100%
Nov 14 14 100% 78% to 100%
Dec 20 22 91% 72% to 97%

Peak flowering in Jan. Each bar is the share of Centaurium tenuiflorum 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. 204 of 207 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 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 1,108 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 1.4 °C 6.1 °C 11.0 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 19.8 °C 26.3 °C 34.6 °C
Annual rainfall 448 mm 806 mm 1,330 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 3 mm 14 mm 226 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 1,108 research-grade observations of Centaurium tenuiflorum 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 32 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 acutiflorum (Schott) Druce
  • Centaurium hermannii (Sennen) Sennen
  • Centaurium laxiflorum H.Lindb.
  • Centaurium laxiflorum f. album H.Lindb.
  • Centaurium ludovicii Sennen
  • Centaurium pulchellum f. albiflorum
  • Centaurium pulchellum f. album (H.Lindb.) Maire
  • Centaurium pulchellum subsp. laxiflorum (H.Lindb.) Maire
  • Centaurium pulchellum subsp. tenuiflorum (Hoffmanns. & Link) Maire
  • Centaurium pulchellum var. affine (Rouy) Emb. & Maire
  • Centaurium pulchellum var. hermannii (Sennen) O.Bolòs & Vigo
  • Centaurium pulchellum var. tenuiflorum (Hoffmanns. & Link) Samp.
  • Centaurium tenuiflorum f. albiflorum H.Lindb.
  • Centaurium tenuiflorum f. bicolor Faure & Maire
  • Centaurium tenuiflorum var. acutiflorum (Schott) Zeltner
  • Centaurium tenuiflorum var. affine (Rouy) Maire
  • Centaurium tenuiflorum var. hermannii (Sennen) Zeltner
  • Centaurium viridense (Bolle) Druce
  • Erythraea acutiflora Schott
  • Erythraea centaurium subsp. latifolia Bonnier & Layens
  • Erythraea cymuligera Gand.
  • Erythraea hermannii Sennen
  • Erythraea latifolia var. pseudolinariifolia Rouy
  • Erythraea latifolia var. tenuiflora (Hoffmanns. & Link) Willk.

and 8 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. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. 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.