Indigofera linifolia(L.f.) Retz.

WFO wfo-0000193193 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Indigofera linifolia, photographed by Dinesh Valke
fig. a Dinesh Valke, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2021-08-29 / obs. 154678618

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
05146642
Filed as
Indigofera linifolia (L.f.) Retz.
Det. by
Y. Tateishi
Collected
J. Murata 1999-11-06
Origin
MM
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 29 botanical countries

Regions where Indigofera linifolia is native: Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan-South Sudan, Afghanistan, China South-Central, Taiwan, Yemen, Assam, Bangladesh, Cambodia, East Himalaya, India, Jawa, Lesser Sunda Is., Maluku, Myanmar, Nepal, New Guinea, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam, West Himalaya, New South Wales, Northern Territory, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia EritreaEthiopiaSudan-South SudanAfghanistanChina South-CentralTaiwanYemenAssamBangladeshCambodiaEast HimalayaIndiaJawaLesser Sunda Is.MalukuMyanmarNepalNew GuineaPakistanPhilippinesSri LankaThailandVietnamWest HimalayaNew South WalesNorthern TerritoryQueenslandSouth AustraliaWestern Australia
Native distribution of Indigofera linifolia, 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
Assam ASS ASIA-TROPICAL
Bangladesh BAN
Cambodia CBD
East Himalaya EHM
India IND
Jawa JAW
Lesser Sunda Is. LSI
Maluku MOL
Myanmar MYA
Nepal NEP
New Guinea NWG
Pakistan PAK
Philippines PHI
Sri Lanka SRL
Thailand THA
Vietnam VIE
West Himalaya WHM
New South Wales NSW AUSTRALASIA
Northern Territory NTA
Queensland QLD
South Australia SOA
Western Australia WAU
Afghanistan AFG ASIA-TEMPERATE
China South-Central CHC
Taiwan TAI
Yemen YEM
Eritrea ERI AFRICA
Ethiopia ETH
Sudan-South Sudan SUD

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 54 in flower of 73 examined

Proportion of examined Indigofera linifolia in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 7 8 88% 53% to 98%
Feb 3 4 too few examined
Mar 3 3 too few examined
Apr 9 12 75% 47% to 91%
May 4 9 44% 19% to 73%
Jun 2 5 40% 12% to 77%
Jul 3 5 60% 23% to 88%
Aug 6 8 75% 41% to 93%
Sep 5 5 100% 57% to 100%
Oct 7 8 88% 53% to 98%
Nov 5 5 100% 57% to 100%
Dec 0 1 too few examined

Peak flowering in Sep. Each bar is the share of Indigofera linifolia 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. 54 of 73 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 3 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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 358 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 6.9 °C 14.4 °C 20.4 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 28.2 °C 33.3 °C 40.3 °C
Annual rainfall 309 mm 852 mm 2,199 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 4 mm 28 mm 136 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 358 research-grade observations of Indigofera linifolia 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 16 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.

  • Anil linifolia (L.f.) Kuntze
  • Anil linifolia var. campbellii (Wight ex Baker) Kuntze
  • Anil linifolia var. lanceolata Kuntze
  • Anil linifolia var. normalis Kuntze
  • Anila linifolia (L.f.) Kuntze
  • Hallia glauca Zipp. ex Span.
  • Hedysarum linifolium L.f.
  • Indigofera albicans Span.
  • Indigofera albicans R.Br.
  • Indigofera linifolia subsp. campbellii (Wight ex Baker) Panigrahi & Murti
  • Indigofera linifolia var. campbellii Wight ex Baker
  • Indigofera polygonoides J.C.Wendl.
  • Indigofera roxburghii Tausch
  • Sphaeridiophorum abyssinicum Jaub. & Spach
  • Sphaeridiophorum linifolium (L.f.) Desv.
  • Sphaeridiophorum linifolium Desv.

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.