Elytraria bromoides (wheatspike scalystem)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 7 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 7 times, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Elytraria bromoides, photographed by Alexis López Hernández — fig. a Alexis López Hernández, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-04-21 / obs. 128965914

Elytraria bromoides, photographed by Rodolfo Salinas Villarreal — fig. b Rodolfo Salinas Villarreal, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 121337086

Elytraria bromoides, photographed by Tereso Hernández Morales — fig. c Tereso Hernández Morales, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 94726426

Elytraria bromoides, photographed by Eric Knight — fig. d Eric Knight, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 71217903

Elytraria bromoides, photographed by Alberto Wong — fig. e Alberto Wong, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 30780265

Elytraria bromoides, photographed by johnyochum — fig. g johnyochum, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 136499487

Elytraria bromoides, photographed by Sam Kieschnick — fig. h Sam Kieschnick, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 128467407

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 6 botanical countries

Native distribution of Elytraria bromoides, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Mexico Central	MXC	NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Gulf	MXG
Mexico Northeast	MXE
Mexico Southeast	MXT
Texas	TEX
Guatemala	GUA	SOUTHERN AMERICA

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 46 in flower of 46 examined

100%

Proportion of examined Elytraria bromoides in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	0	0	too few examined
Feb	2	2	too few examined
Mar	8	8	100%	68% to 100%
Apr	6	6	100%	61% to 100%
May	12	12	100%	76% to 100%
Jun	9	9	100%	70% to 100%
Jul	4	4	too few examined
Aug	2	2	too few examined
Sep	0	0	too few examined
Oct	1	1	too few examined
Nov	0	0	too few examined
Dec	2	2	too few examined

Peak flowering in Mar. Each bar is the share of Elytraria bromoides 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. 46 of 46 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.

Also published as 2 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.

Elytraria acuminata (Small) Cory
Tubiflora acuminata Small

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.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. 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.