Cotula mexicana(DC.) Cabrera

Mexican brassbuttons

WFO wfo-0000075335 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Cotula mexicana, photographed by Nicolás Lavandero
fig. a Nicolás Lavandero, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-04-04 / obs. 187380578
Cotula mexicana, photographed by Nicolás Lavandero
fig. b Nicolás Lavandero, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 187379460
Cotula mexicana, photographed by Nicolás Lavandero
fig. c Nicolás Lavandero, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 187356089
Cotula mexicana, photographed by Nicolás Lavandero
fig. d Nicolás Lavandero, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 187356159
Cotula mexicana, photographed by Naturalist Tours
fig. e Naturalist Tours, CC0 1.0 / obs. 178574827
Cotula mexicana, photographed by Trevor Van Loon
fig. f Trevor Van Loon, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 185303428
Cotula mexicana, photographed by Jared Shorma
fig. g Jared Shorma, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 112842731
Cotula mexicana, photographed by Humber Alberto
fig. h Humber Alberto, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 194697964

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
417088
Filed as
Cotula mexicana (DC.) Cabrera
Det. by
C. E. Lloyd 1971-09-22
Collected
C. C. Parry 1878
Origin
MX
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 15 botanical countries

Regions where Cotula mexicana is native: Mexico Central, Mexico Gulf, Mexico Northeast, Mexico Southwest, Argentina Northeast, Argentina Northwest, Bolivia, Chile Central, Chile North, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Panamá, Peru, Venezuela Mexico CentralMexico GulfMexico NortheastMexico SouthwestArgentina NortheastArgentina NorthwestBoliviaChile CentralChile NorthColombiaCosta RicaEcuadorPanamáPeruVenezuela
Native distribution of Cotula mexicana, 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.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Argentina Northeast AGE SOUTHERN AMERICA
Argentina Northwest AGW
Bolivia BOL
Chile Central CLC
Chile North CLN
Colombia CLM
Costa Rica COS
Ecuador ECU
Panamá PAN
Peru PER
Venezuela VEN
Mexico Central MXC NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Gulf MXG
Mexico Northeast MXE
Mexico Southwest MXS

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 49 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -4.0 °C 0.5 °C 8.5 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 10.1 °C 14.0 °C 19.3 °C
Annual rainfall 339 mm 1,524 mm 2,659 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 8 mm 147 mm 334 mm

It is found where winters bring light frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 49 research-grade observations of Cotula mexicana 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 12 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.

  • Cotula cabrerae Caro
  • Cotula pedicellata (Ruiz & Pav.) Cabrera
  • Cotula valparadisea Phil.
  • Gymnostyles minuta (L.f.) Spreng.
  • Gymnostyles pedunculata Moc. ex DC.
  • Gymnostyles peruviana Spreng.
  • Hippia minuta L.f.
  • Soliva mexicana DC.
  • Soliva minuta (L.f.) Sweet
  • Soliva pedicellata Ruiz & Pav.
  • Soliva pedunculata Ruiz & Pav. ex Steud.
  • Soliva pygmaea Kunth

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.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. 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.