Chromolaena laevigata

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 6 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 6 times, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Chromolaena laevigata, photographed by Bahiano Ayala — fig. a Bahiano Ayala, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-03-12 / obs. 188748146

Chromolaena laevigata, photographed by Eduardo Luis Beltrocco — fig. b Eduardo Luis Beltrocco, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 113105773

Chromolaena laevigata, photographed by Romi Galeota Lencina — fig. c Romi Galeota Lencina, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 61892241

Chromolaena laevigata, photographed by Étienne Lacroix-Carignan — fig. d Étienne Lacroix-Carignan, CC0 1.0 / obs. 36115488

Chromolaena laevigata, photographed by Hugo Hulsberg — fig. e Hugo Hulsberg, CC0 1.0 / obs. 175731939

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.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium: The New York Botanical Garden
Accession: 1181630
Filed as: Chromolaena laevigata (Lam.) R.M.King & H.Rob.
Det. by: J. Tannus 2005-01-01
Collected: J. Tannus 2002-04-26
Origin: BR
The sheet: View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 25 botanical countries

Native distribution of Chromolaena laevigata, 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
Argentina Northeast	AGE	SOUTHERN AMERICA
Argentina Northwest	AGW
Bolivia	BOL
Brazil North	BZN
Brazil Northeast	BZE
Brazil South	BZS
Brazil Southeast	BZL
Brazil West-Central	BZC
Colombia	CLM
Costa Rica	COS
Ecuador	ECU
El Salvador	ELS
French Guiana	FRG
Guatemala	GUA
Guyana	GUY
Nicaragua	NIC
Panamá	PAN
Paraguay	PAR
Peru	PER
Suriname	SUR
Trinidad-Tobago	TRT
Uruguay	URU
Venezuela	VEN
Mexico Southeast	MXT	NORTHERN AMERICA
New York	NWY

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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 177 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	7.4 °C	9.0 °C	16.7 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	24.5 °C	30.5 °C	31.8 °C
Annual rainfall	997 mm	1,256 mm	2,259 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	52 mm	155 mm	354 mm

It is barely found anywhere that freezes. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 177 research-grade observations of Chromolaena laevigata 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.

Also published as 24 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.

Chrysocoma punctata Steud.
Chrysocoma punctulata Vell.
Eupatorium alternans DC.
Eupatorium australe Thunb.
Eupatorium laevigatum Lam.
Eupatorium laevigatum f. albiflorum Kuntze
Eupatorium laevigatum f. flavidum Kuntze
Eupatorium laevigatum f. laevigatum
Eupatorium laevigatum f. lilacinum Kuntze
Eupatorium laevigatum var. arenarium Baker
Eupatorium laevigatum var. claussenii Baker
Eupatorium laevigatum var. longepetiolatum Hassl.
Eupatorium laevigatum var. tomentosum Baker
Eupatorium osseanum Sch.Bip. ex Baker
Eupatorium propinquum DC.
Eupatorium psiadiaefolium DC.
Eupatorium psiadiifolium DC.
Eupatorium psiadiifolium var. latifolium DC.
Eupatorium psiadiifolium var. tereticaule DC.
Eupatorium resinosum Poepp. & Endl.
Eupatorium resinosum var. kentuckiense Fernald
Osmia alternans (DC.) Sch.Bip.
Osmia laevigata Sch.Bip.
Osmia propinqua (DC.) Sch.Bip.

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.
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.