Lepidium fremontii (desert pepperweed)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Lepidium fremontii, photographed by David Batchelor — fig. a David Batchelor, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-04-15 / obs. 203991151

Lepidium fremontii, photographed by Amy — fig. b Amy, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 182810166

Lepidium fremontii, photographed by joergmlpts — fig. c joergmlpts, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 182431966

Lepidium fremontii, photographed by Daniel S. — fig. d Daniel S., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 122844669

Lepidium fremontii, photographed by Nolan Exe — fig. f Nolan Exe, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 129225195

Lepidium fremontii, photographed by Jacob Friend — fig. g Jacob Friend, CC0 1.0 / obs. 118138839

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 5 botanical countries

Native distribution of Lepidium fremontii, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Arizona	ARI	NORTHERN AMERICA
California	CAL
Mexico Northeast	MXE
Nevada	NEV
Utah	UTA

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 346 in flower of 365 examined

92%

96%

98%

96%

87%

71%

100%

Proportion of examined Lepidium fremontii in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	11	12	92%	65% to 99%
Feb	50	52	96%	87% to 99%
Mar	107	109	98%	94% to 100%
Apr	106	111	96%	90% to 98%
May	45	52	87%	75% to 93%
Jun	5	7	71%	36% to 92%
Jul	0	0	too few examined
Aug	1	1	too few examined
Sep	1	1	too few examined
Oct	1	1	too few examined
Nov	6	6	100%	61% to 100%
Dec	13	13	100%	77% to 100%

Peak flowering in Nov. Each bar is the share of Lepidium fremontii 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. 346 of 365 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 4 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.

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.

Lepidium fremontii var. fremontii
Lepidium fremontii var. stipitatum Rollins
Nasturtium fremontii (S.Watson) Kuntze

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