Emilia fosbergiiNicolson

Florida tasselflower

WFO wfo-0000084726 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Emilia fosbergii, photographed by Kevin Faccenda
fig. a Kevin Faccenda, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-31 / obs. 204005517

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
01214673
Filed as
Emilia fosbergii Nicolson
Det. by
D. H. Nicolson 1974-05-01
Collected
J. T. Baldwin Jr. 1942-09-23
Origin
BR
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 31 botanical countries

Regions where Emilia fosbergii is native: Florida, Louisiana, Mexico Southeast, Texas, Argentina Northeast, Bahamas, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil West-Central, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Leeward Is., Nicaragua, Panamá, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Suriname, Trinidad-Tobago, Venezuela, Windward Is. FloridaLouisianaMexico SoutheastTexasArgentina NortheastBelizeBoliviaBrazil West-CentralColombiaCosta RicaCubaDominican RepublicEcuadorEl SalvadorFrench GuianaGuatemalaGuyanaHaitiHondurasJamaicaNicaraguaPanamáParaguayPeruPuerto RicoSurinameTrinidad-TobagoVenezuela BahamasLeeward Is.Windward Is.
Native distribution of Emilia fosbergii, 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 Northeast AGE SOUTHERN AMERICA
Bahamas BAH
Belize BLZ
Bolivia BOL
Brazil West-Central BZC
Colombia CLM
Costa Rica COS
Cuba CUB
Dominican Republic DOM
Ecuador ECU
El Salvador ELS
French Guiana FRG
Guatemala GUA
Guyana GUY
Haiti HAI
Honduras HON
Jamaica JAM
Leeward Is. LEE
Nicaragua NIC
Panamá PAN
Paraguay PAR
Peru PER
Puerto Rico PUE
Suriname SUR
Trinidad-Tobago TRT
Venezuela VEN
Windward Is. WIN
Florida FLA NORTHERN AMERICA
Louisiana LOU
Mexico Southeast MXT
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 835 in flower of 852 examined

Proportion of examined Emilia fosbergii in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 90 92 98% 92% to 99%
Feb 81 84 96% 90% to 99%
Mar 92 95 97% 91% to 99%
Apr 87 88 99% 94% to 100%
May 61 62 98% 91% to 100%
Jun 45 48 94% 83% to 98%
Jul 56 56 100% 94% to 100%
Aug 50 51 98% 90% to 100%
Sep 51 51 100% 93% to 100%
Oct 71 72 99% 93% to 100%
Nov 61 62 98% 91% to 100%
Dec 90 91 99% 94% to 100%

Peak flowering in Jul. Each bar is the share of Emilia fosbergii 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. 835 of 852 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 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 1,984 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 9.0 °C 14.5 °C 22.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 25.5 °C 30.1 °C 32.0 °C
Annual rainfall 857 mm 1,429 mm 2,748 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 37 mm 185 mm 424 mm

It is barely found anywhere that freezes. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,984 research-grade observations of Emilia fosbergii 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 1 synonym

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.

  • Emilia sonchifolia var. rosea Bello

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.