Glossocardia bidens(Retz.) Veldkamp

cobbler's tack

WFO wfo-0000134035 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Glossocardia bidens, photographed by Greg Tasney
fig. a Greg Tasney, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-05-28 / obs. 201172987

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 32333267
Filed as
Glossocardia bidens (Retz.) Veldkamp
Det. by
not recorded on this sheet
Collected
L. Pedley 1976-12-08
Origin
AU
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 29 botanical countries

Regions where Glossocardia bidens is native: Tanzania, China Southeast, Hainan, Kazan-retto, Nansei-shoto, Taiwan, Tibet, Borneo, East Himalaya, India, Lesser Sunda Is., Myanmar, Nepal, New Guinea, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, West Himalaya, New South Wales, Northern Territory, Queensland, South Australia, Victoria, Western Australia, Caroline Is., Fiji, Marianas, New Caledonia, Vanuatu TanzaniaChina SoutheastHainanTaiwanTibetBorneoEast HimalayaIndiaLesser Sunda Is.MyanmarNepalNew GuineaPhilippinesThailandVietnamWest HimalayaNew South WalesNorthern TerritoryQueenslandSouth AustraliaVictoriaWestern AustraliaFijiNew Caledonia Nansei-shotoCaroline Is.MarianasVanuatu
Native distribution of Glossocardia bidens, 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
Borneo BOR ASIA-TROPICAL
East Himalaya EHM
India IND
Lesser Sunda Is. LSI
Myanmar MYA
Nepal NEP
New Guinea NWG
Philippines PHI
Thailand THA
Vietnam VIE
West Himalaya WHM
China Southeast CHS ASIA-TEMPERATE
Hainan CHH
Kazan-retto KZN
Nansei-shoto NNS
Taiwan TAI
Tibet CHT
New South Wales NSW AUSTRALASIA
Northern Territory NTA
Queensland QLD
South Australia SOA
Victoria VIC
Western Australia WAU
Caroline Is. CRL PACIFIC
Fiji FIJ
Marianas MRN
New Caledonia NWC
Vanuatu VAN
Tanzania TAN AFRICA

Not drawn on the map: Kazan-retto. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is listed rather than guessed at.

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 107 in flower of 118 examined

Proportion of examined Glossocardia bidens in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 17 18 94% 74% to 99%
Feb 7 7 100% 65% to 100%
Mar 11 12 92% 65% to 99%
Apr 7 8 88% 53% to 98%
May 8 9 89% 56% to 98%
Jun 3 5 60% 23% to 88%
Jul 10 10 100% 72% to 100%
Aug 12 15 80% 55% to 93%
Sep 5 5 100% 57% to 100%
Oct 8 8 100% 68% to 100%
Nov 6 6 100% 61% to 100%
Dec 13 15 87% 62% to 96%

Peak flowering in Feb. Each bar is the share of Glossocardia bidens 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. 107 of 118 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 394 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 5.2 °C 9.6 °C 20.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 26.9 °C 28.6 °C 31.0 °C
Annual rainfall 669 mm 995 mm 2,070 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 59 mm 108 mm 144 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 394 research-grade observations of Glossocardia bidens 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 21 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.

  • Bidens denudata Turcz.
  • Bidens meyeniana Walp.
  • Bidens novae-caledoniae Forst. ex Schltdl.
  • Bidens pinnatifida Forst. ex DC.
  • Bidens rigida Hort.Calc. ex C.B.Clarke
  • Bidens tenuifolia Labill.
  • Coreopsis tanna Steud.
  • Coreopsis tannensis Biehler
  • Glossogyne bidens (Retz.) Alston
  • Glossogyne bidentidea F.Muell.
  • Glossogyne oluanpiensis S.S.Ying
  • Glossogyne pedunculosa DC.
  • Glossogyne pinnatifida DC. ex Wight
  • Glossogyne pinnatifida DC.
  • Glossogyne tannensis (Spreng.) Garn.-Jones
  • Glossogyne tenuifolia (Labill.) Cass. ex Cass.
  • Glossogyne tenuifolia (Labill.) Cass. ex Less.
  • Glossogyne tenuifolia var. divaricata Domin
  • Glossogyne tenuifolia var. tenuifolia
  • Neuractis bidens (Retz.) Veldkamp ex Mesfin
  • Zinnia bidens Retz.

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. USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol GLBI3. public domain. 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.