Liatris spicata (dense blazing star)

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Liatris spicata, photographed by Elias — fig. a Elias, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-08-14 / obs. 150742402

Liatris spicata, photographed by Brian White — fig. b Brian White, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 153976079

Liatris spicata, photographed by kerykeion — fig. c kerykeion, CC0 1.0 / obs. 163195048

Liatris spicata, photographed by Ryan Sorrells — fig. e Ryan Sorrells, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 148644323

Liatris spicata, photographed by Mark Richman — fig. g Mark Richman, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 146306076

Liatris spicata, photographed by Tom Lazar — fig. h Tom Lazar, CC0 1.0 / obs. 150667153

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 = 967 observations

383

319

130

Flowering observations of Liatris spicata by month
Month	Observations
Jan	0
Feb	1
Mar	3
Apr	1
May	6
Jun	49
Jul	383
Aug	319
Sep	130
Oct	56
Nov	17
Dec	2

Peak flowering in Jul, from 967 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 22 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.

Kuhnia spicata (L.) Baill.
Kuhnia spicata (L.) Baill.
Lacinaria elongata Greene
Lacinaria spicata (L.) Kuntze
Lacinaria spicata f. resinosa (Nutt.) Voss
Lacinaria spicata f. spicata
Lacinaria spicata var. spicata
Lacinaria vittata Greene
Liatris macrostachya Michaux
Liatris magnifica G.Nicholson
Liatris picta Barton ex DC.
Liatris pilosa [Ker-Gawl.]
Liatris pumila G.Lodd.
Liatris resinosa Nutt.
Liatris sessiliflora Benol.
Liatris spicata f. spicata
Liatris spicata var. spicata
Liatris turbinata Sweet
Liatris vittata K.Schum.
Liatris vittata (Greene) Schumann
Serratula spicata L.
Suprago spicata (L.) Gaertn.

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.

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.