Lepechinia calycina(Benth.) Epling

California Pitcher Sage

WFO wfo-0000226016 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Lepechinia calycina, photographed by Annette Herz
fig. a Annette Herz, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-17 / obs. 198546111
Lepechinia calycina, photographed by Amthinkia
fig. b Amthinkia, CC0 1.0 / obs. 201131784
Lepechinia calycina, photographed by Alexander Wentworth
fig. c Alexander Wentworth, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204527155
Lepechinia calycina, photographed by joergmlpts
fig. d joergmlpts, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204719333
Lepechinia calycina, photographed by joergmlpts
fig. e joergmlpts, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 198974463
Lepechinia calycina, photographed by Alexander Wentworth
fig. f Alexander Wentworth, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204534277
Lepechinia calycina, photographed by Alexander Wentworth
fig. g Alexander Wentworth, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204526864
Lepechinia calycina, photographed by George Williams
fig. h George Williams, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 198523877

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 = 1,484 observations

Peak flowering in May, from 1,484 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 9 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.

  • Alguelagum calycinum (Benth.) Kuntze
  • Lepechinia calycina var. glabella (A.Gray) Epling ex Munz
  • Lepechinia calycina var. wallacei (A.Gray) Epling ex Munz
  • Sphacele blochmanae Eastw.
  • Sphacele calycina Benth.
  • Sphacele calycina var. glabella A.Gray
  • Sphacele calycina var. gracilis (Eastw.) Jeps.
  • Sphacele calycina var. wallacei A.Gray
  • Sphacele gracilis Eastw.

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.