Elephantopus carolinianus (leafy elephant's-foot)

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Elephantopus carolinianus, photographed by Joseph Aubert — fig. a Joseph Aubert, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-04 / obs. 204034187

Elephantopus carolinianus, photographed by Rich Sommer — fig. b Rich Sommer, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195760200

Elephantopus carolinianus, photographed by Annika Lindqvist — fig. d Annika Lindqvist, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 167357437

Elephantopus carolinianus, photographed by Lauren McLaurin — fig. e Lauren McLaurin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 167444631

Elephantopus carolinianus, photographed by Will Kuhn — fig. g Will Kuhn, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 163437105

Elephantopus carolinianus, photographed by Joshua Liverman — fig. h Joshua Liverman, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 183797204

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 = 991 observations

387

439

Flowering observations of Elephantopus carolinianus by month
Month	Observations
Jan	0
Feb	0
Mar	0
Apr	4
May	4
Jun	7
Jul	73
Aug	387
Sep	439
Oct	72
Nov	5
Dec	0

Peak flowering in Sep, from 991 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 8 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.

Elephantopus carolinianus Willd.
Elephantopus carolinianus f. carolinianus
Elephantopus carolinianus f. vestitus Fernald
Elephantopus carolinianus var. carolinianus
Elephantopus carolinianus var. violaceus (Sch.Bip.) C.F.Baker
Elephantopus glaber Sessé & Moc.
Elephantopus scaber var. carolinianus Kuntze
Elephantopus scaber var. coeruleus Kuntze

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.

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.