Chaenactis stevioides (Esteve's pincushion)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Chaenactis stevioides, photographed by Tim Messick — fig. a Tim Messick, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-18 / obs. 201458862

Chaenactis stevioides, photographed by Nora Bales — fig. c Nora Bales, CC0 1.0 / obs. 123145875

Chaenactis stevioides, photographed by Jim Morefield — fig. d Jim Morefield, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 54044351

Chaenactis stevioides, photographed by Benoit Renaud — fig. e Benoit Renaud, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 65028926

Chaenactis stevioides, photographed by Zack Abbey — fig. f Zack Abbey, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 34727373

Chaenactis stevioides, photographed by Jesse Rorabaugh — fig. g Jesse Rorabaugh, CC0 1.0 / obs. 33758225

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 10 botanical countries

Native distribution of Chaenactis stevioides, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Arizona	ARI	NORTHERN AMERICA
California	CAL
Colorado	COL
Idaho	IDA
Mexico Northwest	MXN
Nevada	NEV
New Mexico	NWM
Oregon	ORE
Utah	UTA
Wyoming	WYO

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 484 in flower of 529 examined

69%

89%

99%

96%

98%

78%

56%

Proportion of examined Chaenactis stevioides in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	27	39	69%	54% to 81%
Feb	95	107	89%	81% to 93%
Mar	201	203	99%	96% to 100%
Apr	85	89	96%	89% to 98%
May	59	60	98%	91% to 100%
Jun	7	9	78%	45% to 94%
Jul	0	0	too few examined
Aug	0	0	too few examined
Sep	0	0	too few examined
Oct	0	0	too few examined
Nov	0	4	too few examined
Dec	10	18	56%	34% to 75%

Peak flowering in Mar. Each bar is the share of Chaenactis stevioides 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. 484 of 529 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 5 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.

Also published as 8 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.

Chaenactis brachypappa A.Gray
Chaenactis furcata Stockw.
Chaenactis gillespiei Stockw.
Chaenactis latifolia Stockw.
Chaenactis mexicana Stockw.
Chaenactis stevioides var. brachypappa H.M.Hall
Chaenactis stevioides var. stevioides
Chaenactis stevioides var. thornberi Stockw.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
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.