Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations
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 141 botanical countries
Not drawn on the map: Socotra, Kazan-retto, Ogasawara-shoto, Cocos (Keeling) Is., Easter Is., Gilbert Is.. We hold no public-domain boundary for these regions, so they are listed rather than guessed at.
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 92 in flower of 120 examined
Peak flowering in Oct. Each bar is the share of Cyperus brevifolius 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. 92 of 120 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 2 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 33 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.
- Cyperus brevifolius f. firmiculmis Kük.
- Cyperus cruciformis (Schrad. ex Schult.) Endl.
- Cyperus pluristamineus (Govind. & Ramani) Kottaim.
- Kyllinga brevifolia Rottb.
- Kyllinga brevifolia f. laxa H.Pfeiff.
- Kyllinga brevifolia var. andamanica Wad.Khan & Diwakar
- Kyllinga brevifolia var. cruciformis (Schrad. ex Schult.) Cherm.
- Kyllinga brevifolia var. gibbosa Honda
- Kyllinga brevifolia var. longifolia Boeckeler
- Kyllinga cruciata Nees
- Kyllinga cruciformis Schrad.
- Kyllinga elongata Kunth
- Kyllinga fuscata Miq.
- Kyllinga gracilis Kunth
- Kyllinga hohenackeri Hochst. ex Steud.
- Kyllinga honolulu Steud. ex Jard.
- Kyllinga intermedia var. oligostachya C.B.Clarke
- Kyllinga laxa Schrad. ex Nees
- Kyllinga longiculmis Miq.
- Kyllinga monocephala Thunb.
- Kyllinga monocephala L.f.
- Kyllinga nivea Pers.
- Kyllinga odorata Liebm.
- Kyllinga oligostachya Boeckeler
and 9 more.
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.
- USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol KYBR. public domain. 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.