Kalmia latifoliaL.

mountain laurel

WFO wfo-0000356132 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Kalmia latifolia, photographed by Sean Haight
fig. a Sean Haight, CC0 1.0 / 2022-06-12 / obs. 205815570
Kalmia latifolia, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. b Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 205894812
Kalmia latifolia, photographed by Michael J. Papay
fig. c Michael J. Papay, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204110788
Kalmia latifolia, photographed by stinger
fig. d stinger, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203865471
Kalmia latifolia, photographed by Matthew Gerke
fig. e Matthew Gerke, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205547019
Kalmia latifolia, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. f Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 203501826
Kalmia latifolia, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. g Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 203515393
Kalmia latifolia, photographed by Kathy Daniel
fig. h Kathy Daniel, CC0 1.0 / obs. 203431739

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.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 6,220 observations

Peak flowering in Jun, from 6,220 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 14 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.

  • Chamaedaphne latifolia (L.) Kuntze
  • Kalmia latifolia f. alba (Bosse) Rehder
  • Kalmia latifolia f. fuscata (Rehder) Rehder
  • Kalmia latifolia f. latifolia
  • Kalmia latifolia f. obtusata (Rehder) Rehder
  • Kalmia latifolia f. polypetala (G.Nicholson) Rehder
  • Kalmia latifolia var. alba Mouill.
  • Kalmia latifolia var. fuscata Rehder
  • Kalmia latifolia var. latifolia
  • Kalmia latifolia var. obtusata Rehder
  • Kalmia latifolia var. polypetala G.Nicholson
  • Kalmia myrtifolia André
  • Kalmia nitida J.Forbes
  • Kalmia serotina Hoffmanns.

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.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.