Linaria spartea (ballast toadflax)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Linaria spartea, photographed by Rafael Medina — fig. a Rafael Medina, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-10-16 / obs. 164045400

Linaria spartea, photographed by Cristina Villaverde — fig. b Cristina Villaverde, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 130982234

Linaria spartea, photographed by Duarte Frade — fig. c Duarte Frade, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 118609175

Linaria spartea, photographed by Carminda Santos — fig. e Carminda Santos, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 78782523

Linaria spartea, photographed by Ricardo Lima — fig. f Ricardo Lima, CC0 1.0 / obs. 75596082

Linaria spartea, photographed by Santiago Soto Maurer — fig. h Santiago Soto Maurer, CC0 1.0 / obs. 21448062

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 3 botanical countries

Native distribution of Linaria spartea, 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
France	FRA	EUROPE
Portugal	POR
Spain	SPA

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 271 in flower of 271 examined

100%

Proportion of examined Linaria spartea in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	3	3	too few examined
Feb	26	26	100%	87% to 100%
Mar	43	43	100%	92% to 100%
Apr	39	39	100%	91% to 100%
May	70	70	100%	95% to 100%
Jun	36	36	100%	90% to 100%
Jul	15	15	100%	80% to 100%
Aug	8	8	100%	68% to 100%
Sep	6	6	100%	61% to 100%
Oct	9	9	100%	70% to 100%
Nov	13	13	100%	77% to 100%
Dec	3	3	too few examined

Peak flowering in Feb. Each bar is the share of Linaria spartea 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. 271 of 271 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 2 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 27 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.

Antirrhinum junceum L.
Antirrhinum praecox (Hoffmanns. & Link) Brot.
Antirrhinum sparteum L.
Antirrhinum spartum L.
Antirrhinum virgatulum Brot.
Kickxia spartea (L.) K.Larsen
Linaria juncea (L.) Chaz.
Linaria juncea var. expansa Samp.
Linaria juncea var. praecox Hoffmanns. & Link ex Samp.
Linaria juncea var. spartea (L.) Samp.
Linaria meonantha Hoffmanns. & Link
Linaria praecox Hoffmanns. & Link
Linaria spartea f. expansa (Samp.) Viano
Linaria spartea f. glandulosa H.Lindb.
Linaria spartea f. meonantha (Hoffmanns. & Link) Viano
Linaria spartea f. virgatula (Brot.) Viano
Linaria spartea subsp. virgatula (Brot.) Franco
Linaria spartea var. brevipes Rouy
Linaria spartea var. expansa (Samp.) Samp.
Linaria spartea var. flaviflora Lange
Linaria spartea var. meonantha Hoffmanns. & Link ex Nyman
Linaria spartea var. praecox Hoffmanns. & Link ex Ficalho
Linaria spartea var. ramosissima Benth.
Linaria spartea var. virgatula Rouy

and 3 more.

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 LISP5. 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.