Itea virginicaL.

Virginia sweetspireVirginia-willow

WFO wfo-0001135532 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Itea virginica, photographed by Ryan Watson
fig. a Ryan Watson, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-12 / obs. 205669261
Itea virginica, photographed by Brian Finzel
fig. b Brian Finzel, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 202606582
Itea virginica, photographed by Jay Horn
fig. c Jay Horn, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203652277
Itea virginica, photographed by Tom Field
fig. d Tom Field, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201548535
Itea virginica, photographed by Tom Field
fig. e Tom Field, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201548680
Itea virginica, photographed by Brian Finzel
fig. f Brian Finzel, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 199878263
Itea virginica, photographed by Tom Field
fig. g Tom Field, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201546544
Itea virginica, photographed by mefisher
fig. h mefisher, CC0 1.0 / obs. 199180575

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.

Native range 22 botanical countries

Regions where Itea virginica is native: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia AlabamaArkansasFloridaGeorgiaIllinoisIndianaKentuckyLouisianaMarylandMississippiMissouriNew JerseyNorth CarolinaOklahomaPennsylvaniaSouth CarolinaTennesseeTexasVirginiaWest Virginia DelawareDistrict of Columbia
Native distribution of Itea virginica, 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
Alabama ALA NORTHERN AMERICA
Arkansas ARK
Delaware DEL
District of Columbia WDC
Florida FLA
Georgia GEO
Illinois ILL
Indiana INI
Kentucky KTY
Louisiana LOU
Maryland MRY
Mississippi MSI
Missouri MSO
New Jersey NWJ
North Carolina NCA
Oklahoma OKL
Pennsylvania PEN
South Carolina SCA
Tennessee TEN
Texas TEX
Virginia VRG
West Virginia WVA

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 363 in flower of 651 examined

Peak flowering in May. Each bar is the share of Itea virginica 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. 363 of 651 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.

Also published as 3 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.

  • Diconangia heterophyla Raf.
  • Itea padifolia Salisb.
  • Itea virginica f. abbreviata Fernald

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. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. 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.