Cosmos bipinnatusCav.

garden cosmos

WFO wfo-0000066682 Accepted WFO 2026-06 7 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–g

Cosmos bipinnatus, photographed by Shaun Swanepoel
fig. a Shaun Swanepoel, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-23 / obs. 200692117
Cosmos bipinnatus, photographed by Shaun Swanepoel
fig. b Shaun Swanepoel, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 183911786
Cosmos bipinnatus, photographed by Shaun Swanepoel
fig. c Shaun Swanepoel, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 183911840
Cosmos bipinnatus, photographed by Shaun Swanepoel
fig. d Shaun Swanepoel, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 183912124
Cosmos bipinnatus, photographed by Shaun Swanepoel
fig. e Shaun Swanepoel, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 183912188
Cosmos bipinnatus, photographed by Shaun Swanepoel
fig. f Shaun Swanepoel, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 183912385
Cosmos bipinnatus, photographed by Nathan Aaron
fig. g Nathan Aaron, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 198723369

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 = 2,060 observations

Peak flowering in Sep, from 2,060 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 26 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.

  • Bidens bipinnata (Cav.) Baill.
  • Bidens formosa (Bonato) Sch.Bip.
  • Bidens lindleyi Sch.Bip.
  • Coreopsis formosa Bonato ex Pritz.
  • Coreopsis formosa Bonato
  • Cosmea bipinnata (Cav.) Willd.
  • Cosmea tenifolia (Lindl.) Lindl. ex Heynhold
  • Cosmea tenuifolia (Lindl. ex DC.) J.W.Loudon
  • Cosmea tenuifolia (Lindl. ex DC.) J.W.Loudon
  • Cosmos bipinnatus var. albiflorus Sprenger
  • Cosmos bipinnatus var. bipinnatus
  • Cosmos bipinnatus var. exaristatus DC.
  • Cosmos bipinnatus var. typicus Sherff
  • Cosmos diversifolius var. pumilus Sherff
  • Cosmos diversifolius var. typicus Sherff
  • Cosmos formosa Bonato
  • Cosmos hybridus Goldring
  • Cosmos reptans Benth.
  • Cosmos spectabilis Carrière
  • Cosmos spectabilis var. alba Carr.
  • Cosmos spectabilis var. rosea Carr.
  • Cosmos tenuifolia (Lindl. ex DC.) Lindl.
  • Cosmos tenuifolius (Lindl. ex DC.) Lindl.
  • Dahlia repens Hartw. ex Benth.

and 2 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.