Chelone glabraL.

white turtlehead

WFO wfo-0000600741 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Chelone glabra, photographed by Cecil Smith
fig. a Cecil Smith, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-03-20 / obs. 184239011
Chelone glabra, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. b Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 179767209
Chelone glabra, photographed by mefisher
fig. c mefisher, CC0 1.0 / obs. 164968663
Chelone glabra, photographed by Tom Field
fig. d Tom Field, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 170097207
Chelone glabra, photographed by Eric Knight
fig. e Eric Knight, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 164320443
Chelone glabra, photographed by Kathy Richardson
fig. f Kathy Richardson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 160544026
Chelone glabra, photographed by Elias
fig. g Elias, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 160398658
Chelone glabra, photographed by Elias
fig. h Elias, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 161378425

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 = 3,148 observations

Peak flowering in Sep, from 3,148 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 40 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.

  • Chelone alba Moench
  • Chelone chlorantha Pennell & Wherry
  • Chelone elatior Raf.
  • Chelone glabra f. glabra
  • Chelone glabra f. rosea Fernald
  • Chelone glabra f. tomentosa (Raf.) Pennell
  • Chelone glabra f. velutina Pennell & Wherry
  • Chelone glabra subsp. chlorantha (Pennell & Wherry) Pennell
  • Chelone glabra subsp. dilatata (Fernald & Wiegand) Pennell
  • Chelone glabra subsp. elatior (Raf.) Pennell
  • Chelone glabra subsp. elongata (Pennell & Wherry) Pennell
  • Chelone glabra subsp. linifolia (Coleman) Pennell
  • Chelone glabra subsp. ochroleuca (Pennell & Wherry) Pennell
  • Chelone glabra subsp. typica Pennell
  • Chelone glabra var. alba Raf.
  • Chelone glabra var. alba Michx.
  • Chelone glabra var. capitata Raf.
  • Chelone glabra var. chlorantha (Pennell & Wherry) Cooperr.
  • Chelone glabra var. dilatata Fernald & Wiegand
  • Chelone glabra var. elatior Raf.
  • Chelone glabra var. elongata Pennell & Wherry
  • Chelone glabra var. glabra
  • Chelone glabra var. lanceolata Raf.
  • Chelone glabra var. lanceolata Nutt.

and 16 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.

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.