Euthamia occidentalis (Western Goldentop)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Euthamia occidentalis, photographed by Matt Muir — fig. a Matt Muir, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-11-13 / obs. 168749466

Euthamia occidentalis, photographed by joergmlpts — fig. b joergmlpts, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 167993584

Euthamia occidentalis, photographed by George Williams — fig. c George Williams, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 164146364

Euthamia occidentalis, photographed by Daniel S. — fig. d Daniel S., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 163305459

Euthamia occidentalis, photographed by Brian Finzel — fig. e Brian Finzel, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 173910816

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 14 botanical countries

Native distribution of Euthamia occidentalis, 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
Arizona	ARI	NORTHERN AMERICA
British Columbia	BRC
California	CAL
Colorado	COL
Idaho	IDA
Mexico Northwest	MXN
Montana	MNT
Nebraska	NEB
Nevada	NEV
New Mexico	NWM
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 350 in flower of 412 examined

74%

88%

92%

91%

53%

Proportion of examined Euthamia occidentalis 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	0	1	too few examined
May	0	1	too few examined
Jun	2	4	too few examined
Jul	14	19	74%	51% to 88%
Aug	76	86	88%	80% to 94%
Sep	145	157	92%	87% to 96%
Oct	97	107	91%	84% to 95%
Nov	16	30	53%	36% to 70%
Dec	0	2	too few examined

Peak flowering in Sep. Each bar is the share of Euthamia occidentalis 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. 350 of 412 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 7 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 4 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.

Aster baccharoides Kuntze
Euthamia californica Gand.
Euthamia linarifolia Gand.
Solidago occidentalis (Nutt.) Torr. & A.Gray

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.