Crotalaria pumilaOrtega

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WFO wfo-0000174078 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Crotalaria pumila, photographed by Carlos Martorell
fig. a Carlos Martorell, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-11-09 / obs. 204474366
Crotalaria pumila, photographed by Juan Carlos Fonseca Mata
fig. b Juan Carlos Fonseca Mata, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 165651211
Crotalaria pumila, photographed by Luis F. Ramírez
fig. c Luis F. Ramírez, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 159520246
Crotalaria pumila, photographed by M. Socorro González Elizondo
fig. d M. Socorro González Elizondo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 158719702
Crotalaria pumila, photographed by Juan Carlos Fonseca Mata
fig. e Juan Carlos Fonseca Mata, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 153368070
Crotalaria pumila, photographed by Juan Carlos Fonseca Mata
fig. f Juan Carlos Fonseca Mata, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 148569715
Crotalaria pumila, photographed by Alexis López Hernández
fig. g Alexis López Hernández, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 129003393
Crotalaria pumila, photographed by Brandon Corder
fig. h Brandon Corder, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 108764059

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 30 botanical countries

Regions where Crotalaria pumila is native: Arizona, Florida, Mexico Central, Mexico Gulf, Mexico Northeast, Mexico Northwest, Mexico Southeast, Mexico Southwest, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Argentina Northwest, Bahamas, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil West-Central, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Galápagos, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Leeward Is., Nicaragua, Peru, Venezuela, Windward Is. ArizonaFloridaMexico CentralMexico GulfMexico NortheastMexico NorthwestMexico SoutheastMexico SouthwestNew MexicoOklahomaTexasArgentina NorthwestBelizeBoliviaBrazil West-CentralCosta RicaCubaDominican RepublicEcuadorGuatemalaHaitiHondurasJamaicaNicaraguaPeruVenezuela BahamasGalápagosLeeward Is.Windward Is.
Native distribution of Crotalaria pumila, 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. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Argentina Northwest AGW SOUTHERN AMERICA
Bahamas BAH
Belize BLZ
Bolivia BOL
Brazil West-Central BZC
Costa Rica COS
Cuba CUB
Dominican Republic DOM
Ecuador ECU
Galápagos GAL
Guatemala GUA
Haiti HAI
Honduras HON
Jamaica JAM
Leeward Is. LEE
Nicaragua NIC
Peru PER
Venezuela VEN
Windward Is. WIN
Arizona ARI NORTHERN AMERICA
Florida FLA
Mexico Central MXC
Mexico Gulf MXG
Mexico Northeast MXE
Mexico Northwest MXN
Mexico Southeast MXT
Mexico Southwest MXS
New Mexico NWM
Oklahoma OKL
Texas TEX

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 81 in flower of 93 examined

Peak flowering in Sep. Each bar is the share of Crotalaria pumila 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. 81 of 93 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 4 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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 1,104 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 0.7 °C 8.4 °C 19.0 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 23.0 °C 29.8 °C 34.8 °C
Annual rainfall 420 mm 880 mm 1,556 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 15 mm 31 mm 183 mm

It is found where winters are cool but frost is light or absent. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,104 research-grade observations of Crotalaria pumila 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. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 16 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.

  • Crotalaria chiapensis Brandegee
  • Crotalaria dichotoma Graham
  • Crotalaria elliptica M.Martens & Galeotti
  • Crotalaria elliptica var. multiflora M.Martens & Galeotti
  • Crotalaria galeottii Benth.
  • Crotalaria grahamii Sweet
  • Crotalaria havanensis Guss.
  • Crotalaria littoralis DC.
  • Crotalaria littoralis Kunth
  • Crotalaria lupulina Kunth
  • Crotalaria puberula Hook.f.
  • Crotalaria pumila Raf.
  • Crotalaria pumila var. obcordata Griseb.
  • Crotalaria tepicana Hook. & Arn.
  • Crotalaria triantha Moc. & Sessé ex DC.
  • Iocaulon pumila Raf.

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.