Linanthus pungens(Torr.) J.M.Porter & L.A.Johnson

granite prickly phlox

WFO wfo-0000444245 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Linanthus pungens, photographed by Cecelia Alexander
fig. a Cecelia Alexander, CC0 1.0 / 2022-06-11 / obs. 205540415

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.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
3326801
Filed as
Linanthus pungens (Torr.) J.M.Porter & L.A.Johnson
Det. by
A. Tiehm 2022-01-01
Collected
B. Maguire 1945-05-27
Origin
US
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 14 botanical countries

Regions where Linanthus pungens is native: Arizona, British Columbia, California, Colorado, Idaho, Maryland, Mexico Northwest, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Wyoming ArizonaBritish ColumbiaCaliforniaColoradoIdahoMarylandMexico NorthwestMontanaNevadaNew MexicoOregonUtahWashingtonWyoming
Native distribution of Linanthus pungens, 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.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Arizona ARI NORTHERN AMERICA
British Columbia BRC
California CAL
Colorado COL
Idaho IDA
Maryland MRY
Mexico Northwest MXN
Montana MNT
Nevada NEV
New Mexico NWM
Oregon ORE
Utah UTA
Washington WAS
Wyoming WYO

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 278 in flower of 339 examined

Proportion of examined Linanthus pungens in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 0 0 too few examined
Feb 0 2 too few examined
Mar 1 5 20% 4% to 62%
Apr 4 9 44% 19% to 73%
May 35 39 90% 76% to 96%
Jun 137 144 95% 90% to 98%
Jul 80 91 88% 80% to 93%
Aug 10 22 45% 27% to 65%
Sep 7 17 41% 22% to 64%
Oct 3 6 50% 19% to 81%
Nov 1 2 too few examined
Dec 0 2 too few examined

Peak flowering in Jun. Each bar is the share of Linanthus pungens 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. 278 of 339 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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 1,976 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -14.7 °C -7.7 °C -1.9 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 20.6 °C 26.1 °C 33.1 °C
Annual rainfall 207 mm 423 mm 1,557 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 14 mm 45 mm 94 mm

It is found where winters bring hard frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,976 research-grade observations of Linanthus pungens that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 46 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.

  • Aegochloa torreyi G.Don
  • Batanthes pungens (Torr.) Raf.
  • Cantua pungens Torr.
  • Cantua pungens var. hookeri (Douglas ex Hook.) Howell
  • Cantua pungens var. squarrosa (A.Gray) Howell
  • Gilia hallii Parish
  • Gilia hookeri Benth.
  • Gilia lilacina Brand
  • Gilia pungens Benth.
  • Gilia pungens subsp. eu-pungens Brand
  • Gilia pungens subsp. hallii (Milliken) Brand
  • Gilia pungens subsp. pulchriflora Brand
  • Gilia pungens var. devestita Brand
  • Gilia pungens var. hallii Milliken
  • Gilia pungens var. hookeri (Douglas ex Hook.) A.Gray
  • Gilia pungens var. squarrosa A.Gray
  • Gilia pungens var. tenuiloba Milliken
  • Gilia tenuiloba Parish
  • Leptodactylon brevifolium Rydb.
  • Leptodactylon hallii (Milliken) A.Heller
  • Leptodactylon hallii f. subflavidum (Jeps.) Wherry
  • Leptodactylon hazeliae M.Peck
  • Leptodactylon hookeri Nutt.
  • Leptodactylon lilacinum f. pulchriflorum (Brand) Wherry

and 22 more.

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.
  3. USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol LIPU11. public domain. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. 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.