Govenia albaA.Rich. & Galeotti

WFO wfo-0000975066 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Govenia alba, photographed by Neptalí Ramírez Marcial
fig. a Neptalí Ramírez Marcial, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-10-07 / obs. 163358213

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
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
00960371
Filed as
Govenia mutica Rchb.f.
Det. by
C. J. García-Cruz 2007-01-01
Collected
C. G. Pringle 1891-08
Origin
MX
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

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 6 botanical countries

Regions where Govenia alba is native: Mexico Gulf, Mexico Northeast, Mexico Southeast, Mexico Southwest, El Salvador, Guatemala Mexico GulfMexico NortheastMexico SoutheastMexico SouthwestEl SalvadorGuatemala
Native distribution of Govenia alba, 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
Mexico Gulf MXG NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Northeast MXE
Mexico Southeast MXT
Mexico Southwest MXS
El Salvador ELS SOUTHERN AMERICA
Guatemala GUA

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 31 in flower of 36 examined

Proportion of examined Govenia alba in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 0 0 too few examined
Feb 1 1 too few examined
Mar 1 1 too few examined
Apr 1 1 too few examined
May 0 0 too few examined
Jun 1 1 too few examined
Jul 3 3 too few examined
Aug 9 11 82% 52% to 95%
Sep 13 13 100% 77% to 100%
Oct 1 3 too few examined
Nov 1 2 too few examined
Dec 0 0 too few examined

Peak flowering in Sep. Each bar is the share of Govenia alba 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. 31 of 36 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 10 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 1 synonym

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.

  • Govenia mutica Rchb.f.

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.