Libertia chilensis (snowy mermaid)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Libertia chilensis, photographed by Cesar Ormazabal — fig. a Cesar Ormazabal, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-03-20 / obs. 191109167

Libertia chilensis, photographed by Bruno Avilez — fig. b Bruno Avilez, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 172999520

Libertia chilensis, photographed by Nicolás Lavandero — fig. c Nicolás Lavandero, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 133948107

Libertia chilensis, photographed by Tony Rebelo — fig. d Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 31067813

Libertia chilensis, photographed by Alexey Novoselov — fig. h Alexey Novoselov, CC0 1.0 / obs. 170869817

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 4 botanical countries

Native distribution of Libertia chilensis, 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
Argentina South	AGS	SOUTHERN AMERICA
Chile Central	CLC
Chile South	CLS
Juan Fernández Is.	JNF

Not drawn on the map: Juan Fernández Is.. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is listed rather than guessed at.

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 114 in flower of 117 examined

92%

100%

Proportion of examined Libertia chilensis in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	12	13	92%	67% to 99%
Feb	3	4	too few examined
Mar	1	1	too few examined
Apr	0	0	too few examined
May	1	2	too few examined
Jun	2	2	too few examined
Jul	4	4	too few examined
Aug	4	4	too few examined
Sep	6	6	100%	61% to 100%
Oct	40	40	100%	91% to 100%
Nov	22	22	100%	85% to 100%
Dec	19	19	100%	83% to 100%

Peak flowering in Sep. Each bar is the share of Libertia chilensis 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. 114 of 117 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 7 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 15 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.

Choeradodia chilensis (Molina) Herb.
Libertia crassa Graham
Libertia elegans Poepp.
Libertia formosa Graham
Libertia formosa var. crassa (Graham) Baker
Libertia formosa var. grandiflora Johow
Libertia grandiflora Phil.
Libertia ixioides Gay
Orthrosanthus chilensis Klotzsch ex Baker
Sisyrinchium fernandezianum Steud.
Sisyrinchium formosum (Graham) F.Muell.
Sisyrinchium ixioides G.Forster
Strumaria chilensis Molina
Taumastos compressus Raf.
Tekel formosa (Graham) 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.
USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol LIFO. public domain. 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.