Elsholtzia ciliata(Thunb.) Hyl.

crested latesummer mint

WFO wfo-0000948364 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Elsholtzia ciliata, photographed by Alexander Dubynin
fig. a Alexander Dubynin, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-09-12 / obs. 157089380

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
02729562
Filed as
Elsholtzia ciliata (Thunb.) Hyl.
Det. by
not recorded on this sheet
Collected
not recorded
Origin
not recorded
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 34 botanical countries

Regions where Elsholtzia ciliata is native: Afghanistan, Altay, Amur, Buryatiya, China North-Central, China South-Central, China Southeast, Chita, Inner Mongolia, Irkutsk, Japan, Kamchatka, Khabarovsk, Korea, Krasnoyarsk, Kuril Is., Manchuria, Mongolia, Nansei-shoto, Primorye, Sakhalin, Taiwan, Tibet, Tuva, West Siberia, Cambodia, East Himalaya, Laos, Malaya, Myanmar, Nepal, Thailand, Vietnam, West Himalaya AfghanistanAltayAmurBuryatiyaChina North-CentralChina South-CentralChina SoutheastChitaInner MongoliaIrkutskJapanKamchatkaKhabarovskKrasnoyarskManchuriaMongoliaPrimoryeSakhalinTaiwanTibetTuvaWest SiberiaCambodiaEast HimalayaLaosMalayaMyanmarNepalThailandVietnamWest Himalaya KoreaNansei-shoto
Native distribution of Elsholtzia ciliata, 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
Afghanistan AFG ASIA-TEMPERATE
Altay ALT
Amur AMU
Buryatiya BRY
China North-Central CHN
China South-Central CHC
China Southeast CHS
Chita CTA
Inner Mongolia CHI
Irkutsk IRK
Japan JAP
Kamchatka KAM
Khabarovsk KHA
Korea KOR
Krasnoyarsk KRA
Kuril Is. KUR
Manchuria CHM
Mongolia MON
Nansei-shoto NNS
Primorye PRM
Sakhalin SAK
Taiwan TAI
Tibet CHT
Tuva TVA
West Siberia WSB
Cambodia CBD ASIA-TROPICAL
East Himalaya EHM
Laos LAO
Malaya MLY
Myanmar MYA
Nepal NEP
Thailand THA
Vietnam VIE
West Himalaya WHM

Not drawn on the map: Kuril Is.. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is 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 75 in flower of 95 examined

Proportion of examined Elsholtzia ciliata in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 0 2 too few examined
Feb 0 0 too few examined
Mar 1 3 too few examined
Apr 0 0 too few examined
May 0 1 too few examined
Jun 0 0 too few examined
Jul 0 0 too few examined
Aug 9 11 82% 52% to 95%
Sep 34 39 87% 73% to 94%
Oct 28 30 93% 79% to 98%
Nov 2 7 29% 8% to 64%
Dec 1 2 too few examined

Peak flowering in Oct. Each bar is the share of Elsholtzia ciliata 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. 75 of 95 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 8 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 1,318 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -25.7 °C -10.9 °C -3.9 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 22.0 °C 23.7 °C 28.6 °C
Annual rainfall 412 mm 665 mm 1,642 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 29 mm 103 mm 289 mm

It is found where winters are arctic. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,318 research-grade observations of Elsholtzia ciliata 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 37 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.

  • Elsholtzia ciliata f. leucantha T.Lee
  • Elsholtzia ciliata var. brevipes C.Y.Wu & S.C.Huang
  • Elsholtzia ciliata var. depauperata C.Y.Wu & S.C.Huang
  • Elsholtzia ciliata var. duplicatocrenata C.Y.Wu & S.C.Huang
  • Elsholtzia ciliata var. minima Nakai
  • Elsholtzia ciliata var. ramosa (Nakai) C.Y.Wu & H.W.Li
  • Elsholtzia ciliata var. remota C.Y.Wu & S.C.Huang
  • Elsholtzia communis var. longipilosa Hand.-Mazz.
  • Elsholtzia cristata Willd.
  • Elsholtzia cristata f. leucantha Nakai
  • Elsholtzia cristata f. ruderalis Kom.
  • Elsholtzia cristata f. saxatilis Kom.
  • Elsholtzia cristata var. ramosa Nakai
  • Elsholtzia cristata var. saxatilis (Kom.) Nakai
  • Elsholtzia cypriani var. longipilosa (Hand.-Mazz.) C.Y.Wu & S.C.Huang
  • Elsholtzia formosana Hayata
  • Elsholtzia hallasanensis Y.N.Lee
  • Elsholtzia hallasanensis f. albiflora Y.N.Lee
  • Elsholtzia interrupta Ohwi
  • Elsholtzia patrinii (Lepech.) Garcke
  • Elsholtzia pseudocristata H.Lév. & Vaniot
  • Elsholtzia pseudocristata var. saxatilis (Kom.) P.Y.Fu
  • Elsholtzia saxatilis (Kom.) Nakai ex Kitag.
  • Elsholtzia serotina Kom.

and 13 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.
  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.