Linum kingii (King's flax)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Linum kingii, photographed by Annika Lindqvist — fig. a Annika Lindqvist, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-23 / obs. 203410565

Linum kingii, photographed by Matthew Zarzeka — fig. b Matthew Zarzeka, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 140102259

Linum kingii, photographed by Brian Finzel — fig. c Brian Finzel, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 176203654

Linum kingii, photographed by Robbie Hannawacker — fig. d Robbie Hannawacker, CC0 1.0 / obs. 3073393

Linum kingii, photographed by Thomas Koffel — fig. e Thomas Koffel, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 5036188

Linum kingii, photographed by Matt Berger — fig. f Matt Berger, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 145260324

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 Linum kingii, 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
Colorado	COL	NORTHERN AMERICA
Idaho	IDA
Nevada	NEV
Utah	UTA
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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 217 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	-17.6 °C	-11.8 °C	-7.2 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	21.8 °C	25.8 °C	32.3 °C
Annual rainfall	281 mm	408 mm	1,070 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	47 mm	69 mm	186 mm

It is found where winters are severely cold. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 217 research-grade observations of Linum kingii 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.

Also published as 6 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.

Cathartolinum kingii Small
Cathartolinum sedoides (Porter) Small
Linum kingii var. pinetorum M.E.Jones
Linum kingii var. sedoides Porter
Linum sedoides (Porter) H.J.P.Winkl.
Mesyniopsis kingii (S.Watson) W.A.Weber

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.