Hylodesmum glutinosum (pointedleaf ticktrefoil)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Hylodesmum glutinosum, photographed by Brian Finzel — fig. a Brian Finzel, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-06-13 / obs. 205935347

Hylodesmum glutinosum, photographed by florawhite — fig. b florawhite, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205163983

Hylodesmum glutinosum, photographed by Lynn Harper — fig. c Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 163649342

Hylodesmum glutinosum, photographed by saltyhiker — fig. d saltyhiker, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 159268321

Hylodesmum glutinosum, photographed by Thomas Koffel — fig. f Thomas Koffel, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 155465098

Hylodesmum glutinosum, photographed by Randy A Nonenmacher — fig. g Randy A Nonenmacher, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 154174458

Hylodesmum glutinosum, photographed by Jason Swanson — fig. h Jason Swanson, CC0 1.0 / obs. 154279020

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: 1070838
Filed as: Hylodesmum glutinosum (Muhl. ex Willd.) H.Ohashi & R.R.Mill
Det. by: D. E. Atha 2014-01-01
Collected: D. E. Atha 2007-07-20
Origin: US
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 38 botanical countries

Native distribution of Hylodesmum glutinosum, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Alabama	ALA	NORTHERN AMERICA
Arkansas	ARK
Delaware	DEL
District of Columbia	WDC
Florida	FLA
Georgia	GEO
Illinois	ILL
Indiana	INI
Iowa	IOW
Kansas	KAN
Kentucky	KTY
Louisiana	LOU
Maine	MAI
Maryland	MRY
Massachusetts	MAS
Mexico Central	MXC
Mexico Gulf	MXG
Mexico Northeast	MXE
Michigan	MIC
Minnesota	MIN
Mississippi	MSI
Missouri	MSO
New Hampshire	NWH
New Jersey	NWJ
New York	NWY
North Carolina	NCA
Ohio	OHI
Oklahoma	OKL
Ontario	ONT
Pennsylvania	PEN
Québec	QUE
South Carolina	SCA
Tennessee	TEN
Texas	TEX
Vermont	VER
Virginia	VRG
West Virginia	WVA
Wisconsin	WIS

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 1,011 in flower of 1,414 examined

30%

70%

93%

51%

19%

Proportion of examined Hylodesmum glutinosum 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	1	too few examined
Apr	0	0	too few examined
May	14	46	30%	19% to 45%
Jun	216	308	70%	65% to 75%
Jul	637	683	93%	91% to 95%
Aug	127	247	51%	45% to 58%
Sep	16	86	19%	12% to 28%
Oct	1	36	3%	0% to 14%
Nov	0	3	too few examined
Dec	0	2	too few examined

Peak flowering in Jul. Each bar is the share of Hylodesmum glutinosum 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. 1,011 of 1,414 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 6 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.

When it blooms, where you are 5 states

State	Peaks	Observations in flower
Minnesota	Jul	99
New York	Jul	75
Pennsylvania	Jul	148
Vermont	Jul	89
Wisconsin	Jul	92

Where it actually grows measured, from 2,077 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	-14.3 °C	-8.4 °C	-1.6 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	25.1 °C	27.5 °C	31.5 °C
Annual rainfall	819 mm	991 mm	1,346 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	71 mm	178 mm	285 mm

It is found where winters bring hard frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 2,077 research-grade observations of Hylodesmum glutinosum 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 24 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.

Desmodium acuminatum (Michx.) DC.
Desmodium acuminatum f. chandonnettii Fassett
Desmodium acuminatum f. unifoliolatum B.G.Schub.
Desmodium erythrynaefolium (Poir.) DC.
Desmodium erythrynifolium (Juss. ex Poir.) DC.
Desmodium glutinosum (Muhl. ex Willd.) Schindl.
Desmodium glutinosum (Muhl. ex Willd.) Alph.Wood
Desmodium glutinosum f. chandonnetii (Lunell) B.G.Schub.
Desmodium glutinosum f. glutinosum
Desmodium glutinosum f. unifoliatum (B.G.Schub.) B.G.Schub.
Desmodium grandiflorum DC.
Hedysarum acuminatum Michx.
Hedysarum erythrinaefolium Jussieu ex Poiret
Hedysarum erythrinaefolium Poir.
Hedysarum erythrinifolium Juss. ex Poir.
Hedysarum glutinosum Muhl. ex Willd.
Hedysarum grandiflorum Walter
Hylodesmum glutinosum f. chandonnetii (Lunell) G.Wilh. & Rericha
Meibomia acuminata (Michx.) S.F.Blake
Meibomia erythrinifolia (Juss. ex Poir.) Kuntze
Meibomia grandiflora Schindl.
Meibomia grandiflora (DC.) Kuntze
Meibomia grandiflora var. chandonnetii Lunell
Pleurolobus grandiflorus (DC.) MacMill.

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.
USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol DEGL5. public domain. 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.