Eriogonum heracleoides (parsnipflower buckwheat)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Eriogonum heracleoides, photographed by Shane Johnson — fig. a Shane Johnson, CC0 1.0 / 2022-06-07 / obs. 204767037

Eriogonum heracleoides, photographed by Braden J. Judson — fig. c Braden J. Judson, CC0 1.0 / obs. 205919798

Eriogonum heracleoides, photographed by Daryl Nolan — fig. g Daryl Nolan, CC0 1.0 / obs. 203708220

Eriogonum heracleoides, photographed by Old Goat — fig. h Old Goat, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 203704228

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 10 botanical countries

Native distribution of Eriogonum heracleoides, 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
British Columbia	BRC	NORTHERN AMERICA
California	CAL
Colorado	COL
Idaho	IDA
Montana	MNT
Nevada	NEV
Oregon	ORE
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 679 in flower of 1,060 examined

20%

36%

75%

86%

52%

17%

Proportion of examined Eriogonum heracleoides in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	0	2	too few examined
Feb	0	0	too few examined
Mar	0	3	too few examined
Apr	3	15	20%	7% to 45%
May	96	268	36%	30% to 42%
Jun	363	481	75%	71% to 79%
Jul	193	225	86%	81% to 90%
Aug	22	42	52%	38% to 67%
Sep	2	12	17%	5% to 45%
Oct	0	8	0%	0% to 32%
Nov	0	4	too few examined
Dec	0	0	too few examined

Peak flowering in Jul. Each bar is the share of Eriogonum heracleoides 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. 679 of 1,060 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 5 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 11 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.

Eriogonum angustifolium Nutt.
Eriogonum gyrophyllum Nutt.
Eriogonum heracleoides subsp. angustifolium (Nutt.) Piper
Eriogonum heracleoides var. angustifolium (Nutt.) Torr. & A.Gray
Eriogonum heracleoides var. heracleoides
Eriogonum heracleoides var. micranthum Gand.
Eriogonum heracleoides var. minus Benth.
Eriogonum heracleoides var. multiceps Gand.
Eriogonum heracleoides var. rydbergii Gand.
Eriogonum heracleoides var. viride Gand.
Eriogonum umbellatum Benth.

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.