Lobelia polyphyllaHook. & Arn.

WFO wfo-0000815064 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Lobelia polyphylla, photographed by Cesar Ormazabal
fig. a Cesar Ormazabal, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-10-10 / obs. 165668104

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Native range 2 botanical countries

Regions where Lobelia polyphylla is native: Chile Central, Chile North Chile CentralChile North
Native distribution of Lobelia polyphylla, 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
Chile Central CLC SOUTHERN AMERICA
Chile North CLN

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 149 in flower of 168 examined

Proportion of examined Lobelia polyphylla in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 8 8 100% 68% to 100%
Feb 3 3 too few examined
Mar 6 7 86% 49% to 97%
Apr 2 2 too few examined
May 1 2 too few examined
Jun 1 2 too few examined
Jul 3 6 50% 19% to 81%
Aug 9 15 60% 36% to 80%
Sep 37 43 86% 73% to 93%
Oct 40 41 98% 87% to 100%
Nov 29 29 100% 88% to 100%
Dec 10 10 100% 72% to 100%

Peak flowering in Jan. Each bar is the share of Lobelia polyphylla 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. 149 of 168 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.

Also published as 45 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.

  • Dortmanna besseriana (C.Presl) Kuntze
  • Dortmanna bracteosa (C.Presl) Kuntze
  • Dortmanna hyssopifolia (C.Presl) Kuntze
  • Dortmanna polyphylla (Hook. & Arn.) Kuntze
  • Dortmanna purpurea (Lindl.) Kuntze
  • Dortmanna subdentata (C.Presl) Kuntze
  • Lobelia axilliflora (Phil.) Reiche
  • Lobelia hyssopifolia (C.Presl) Gay
  • Lobelia ovata Reiche
  • Lobelia polyphylla f. bracteosa (C.Presl) E.Wimm.
  • Lobelia polyphylla f. hyssopifolia (C.Presl) E.Wimm.
  • Lobelia polyphylla f. linearifolia (Phil.) E.Wimm.
  • Lobelia polyphylla f. polyphylla
  • Lobelia polyphylla f. subdentata (C.Presl) E.Wimm.
  • Lobelia polyphylla var. angustifolia (Hook. & Arn. ex A.DC.) Heynh.
  • Lobelia polyphylla var. besseriana (C.Presl) Reiche
  • Lobelia polyphylla var. bracteosa (C.Presl) Reiche
  • Lobelia polyphylla var. coquimbana (Vatke) Reiche
  • Lobelia polyphylla var. latifolia (A.DC.) Heynh.
  • Lobelia purpurea Lindl.
  • Rapuntium besserianum C.Presl
  • Rapuntium bracteosum C.Presl
  • Rapuntium hyssopifolium C.Presl
  • Rapuntium poeppigianum C.Presl

and 21 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. 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.