Cistanthe umbellata (Mt. Hood pussypaws)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Cistanthe umbellata, photographed by Tim Messick — fig. a Tim Messick, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-22 / obs. 203383866

Cistanthe umbellata, photographed by Trevor Van Loon — fig. b Trevor Van Loon, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 196147595

Cistanthe umbellata, photographed by Drew Meyer — fig. d Drew Meyer, CC0 1.0 / obs. 146013314

Cistanthe umbellata, photographed by John Brew — fig. e John Brew, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 148958502

Cistanthe umbellata, photographed by Melissa McMasters — fig. f Melissa McMasters, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 151292811

Cistanthe umbellata, photographed by mark-groeneveld — fig. g mark-groeneveld, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 141232614

Cistanthe umbellata, photographed by Don Loarie — fig. h Don Loarie, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 140897839

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 11 botanical countries

Native distribution of Cistanthe umbellata, 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
British Columbia	BRC	NORTHERN AMERICA
California	CAL
Colorado	COL
Idaho	IDA
Mexico Northwest	MXN
Montana	MNT
Nevada	NEV
Oregon	ORE
Utah	UTA
Washington	WAS
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 246 in flower of 282 examined

88%

87%

96%

83%

65%

40%

Proportion of examined Cistanthe umbellata in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	0	0	too few examined
Feb	0	0	too few examined
Mar	0	0	too few examined
Apr	1	1	too few examined
May	14	16	88%	64% to 97%
Jun	65	75	87%	77% to 93%
Jul	104	108	96%	91% to 99%
Aug	49	59	83%	72% to 91%
Sep	11	17	65%	41% to 83%
Oct	2	5	40%	12% to 77%
Nov	0	1	too few examined
Dec	0	0	too few examined

Peak flowering in Jul. Each bar is the share of Cistanthe umbellata 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. 246 of 282 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 6 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 6 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.

Calyptridium umbellatum (Torr.) Greene
Calyptridium umbellatum var. caudiciferum (A.Gray) Jeps.
Cistanthe umbellata var. caudicifera (A.Gray) Kartesz & Gandhi
Cistanthe umbellata var. umbellata
Spraguea umbellata Torr.
Spraguea umbellata var. caudicifera A.Gray

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.