Eremogone congesta (Ballhead Sandwort)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Eremogone congesta, photographed by John Powers — fig. a John Powers, CC BY 4.0 / 2020-07-18 / obs. 106718263

Eremogone congesta, photographed by Leah Gardner — fig. d Leah Gardner, CC0 1.0 / obs. 77117794

Eremogone congesta, photographed by David Anderson — fig. e David Anderson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 43283092

Eremogone congesta, photographed by joergmlpts — fig. f joergmlpts, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 21267399

Eremogone congesta, photographed by Antonia Bookbinder — fig. g Antonia Bookbinder, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 20543962

Eremogone congesta, photographed by Amy — fig. h Amy, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 51354728

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 11 botanical countries

Native distribution of Eremogone congesta, 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
Alberta	ABT	NORTHERN AMERICA
California	CAL
Colorado	COL
Idaho	IDA
Montana	MNT
Nevada	NEV
Oregon	ORE
Saskatchewan	SAS
Utah	UTA
Washington	WAS
Wyoming	WYO

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 138 in flower of 148 examined

83%

99%

91%

Proportion of examined Eremogone congesta in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	0	0	too few examined
Feb	0	0	too few examined
Mar	0	0	too few examined
Apr	0	0	too few examined
May	1	1	too few examined
Jun	33	40	83%	68% to 91%
Jul	83	84	99%	94% to 100%
Aug	20	22	91%	72% to 97%
Sep	1	1	too few examined
Oct	0	0	too few examined
Nov	0	0	too few examined
Dec	0	0	too few examined

Peak flowering in Jul. Each bar is the share of Eremogone congesta 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. 138 of 148 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 9 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 22 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.

Arenaria burkei Howell
Arenaria cephaloidea Rydb.
Arenaria congesta Nutt.
Arenaria congesta var. cephaloidea (Rydb.) Maguire
Arenaria congesta var. charlestonensis Maguire
Arenaria congesta var. crassula Maguire
Arenaria congesta var. expansa Maguire
Arenaria congesta var. glandulifera Maguire
Arenaria congesta var. lithophila (Rydb.) Maguire
Arenaria congesta var. prolifera Maguire
Arenaria congesta var. simulans Maguire
Arenaria congesta var. subcongesta (S.Watson) S.Watson
Arenaria congesta var. suffrutescens (A.Gray) B.L.Rob.
Arenaria congesta var. wheelerensis Maguire
Arenaria fendleri var. subcongesta S.Watson
Arenaria lithophila (Rydb.) Rydb.
Arenaria subcongesta (S.Watson) Rydb.
Arenaria subcongesta var. lithophila Rydb.
Brewerina suffrutescens A.Gray
Eremogone congesta var. congesta
Eremogone congesta var. glandulifera (Maguire) R.L.Hartm. & Rabeler
Eremogone congesta var. wheelerensis (Maguire) R.L.Hartm. & Rabeler

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.