Gaillardia megapotamicaBaker

WFO wfo-0000137096 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Gaillardia megapotamica, photographed by veonatura
fig. a veonatura, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-12-15 / obs. 172818478
Gaillardia megapotamica, photographed by Analía Belaus
fig. b Analía Belaus, CC0 1.0 / obs. 172526412
Gaillardia megapotamica, photographed by aacocucci
fig. c aacocucci, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 154828672
Gaillardia megapotamica, photographed by aacocucci
fig. d aacocucci, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 60741338
Gaillardia megapotamica, photographed by Agustín Zarco
fig. e Agustín Zarco, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 60379308
Gaillardia megapotamica, photographed by aacocucci
fig. f aacocucci, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 28694603
Gaillardia megapotamica, photographed by demianlescano
fig. g demianlescano, CC0 1.0 / obs. 61233704
Gaillardia megapotamica, photographed by aacocucci
fig. h aacocucci, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 12149282

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
Smithsonian, US National Herbarium
Accession
US 3504330
Filed as
Gaillardia megapotamica var. scabiosoides (Arn. ex DC.) Baker
Det. by
Simón, P. M.
Collected
P. M. Simón 1999-01-03
Origin
AR
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC0 1.0)

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 5 botanical countries

Regions where Gaillardia megapotamica is native: Argentina Northeast, Argentina Northwest, Argentina South, Brazil South, Uruguay Argentina NortheastArgentina NorthwestArgentina SouthBrazil SouthUruguay
Native distribution of Gaillardia megapotamica, 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.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Argentina Northeast AGE SOUTHERN AMERICA
Argentina Northwest AGW
Argentina South AGS
Brazil South BZS
Uruguay URU

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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 225 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 2.5 °C 4.4 °C 8.0 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 25.2 °C 28.6 °C 31.3 °C
Annual rainfall 390 mm 939 mm 1,207 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 29 mm 53 mm 119 mm

It is found where winters are cool but frost is light or absent. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 225 research-grade observations of Gaillardia megapotamica 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.

Also published as 14 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.

  • Actinea heterophylla var. latifolia Kuntze
  • Cephalophora elongata D.Don ex DC.
  • Cephalophora scabiosoides D.Don ex DC.
  • Cercostylos brasiliensis Less.
  • Cercostylos scabiosoides Arn. ex DC.
  • Cercostylos sesamoides Steud.
  • Gaillardia doniana var. discoidea Griseb.
  • Gaillardia megapotamica f. bicolor Kuntze
  • Gaillardia megapotamica f. biflava Kuntze
  • Gaillardia megapotamica f. fuscorubra Kuntze
  • Gaillardia megapotamica f. megapotamica
  • Gaillardia megapotamica var. megapotamica
  • Gaillardia scabiosoides var. radiata Griseb.
  • Guentheria megapotamica Spreng.

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. 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.