Lobelia tupa (Devil's Tobacco)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Lobelia tupa, photographed by Cristian Riquelme — fig. a Cristian Riquelme, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-01-02 / obs. 109003532

Lobelia tupa, photographed by Cesar Ormazabal — fig. e Cesar Ormazabal, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205805882

Lobelia tupa, photographed by Erasmo Macaya Horta — fig. g Erasmo Macaya Horta, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 5891296

Lobelia tupa, photographed by Alexey Novoselov — fig. h Alexey Novoselov, CC0 1.0 / obs. 170869453

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 2 botanical countries

Native distribution of Lobelia tupa, 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
Chile Central	CLC	SOUTHERN AMERICA
Chile South	CLS

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 118 in flower of 142 examined

98%

100%

65%

80%

86%

14%

82%

Proportion of examined Lobelia tupa in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	42	43	98%	88% to 100%
Feb	27	27	100%	88% to 100%
Mar	11	17	65%	41% to 83%
Apr	4	5	80%	38% to 96%
May	6	7	86%	49% to 97%
Jun	1	1	too few examined
Jul	0	1	too few examined
Aug	2	2	too few examined
Sep	0	3	too few examined
Oct	1	1	too few examined
Nov	1	7	14%	3% to 51%
Dec	23	28	82%	64% to 92%

Peak flowering in Feb. Each bar is the share of Lobelia tupa 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. 118 of 142 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 5 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 29 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 berteroi (A.DC.) Kuntze
Dortmanna bicalcarata Kuntze
Dortmanna mucronata (Cav.) Kuntze
Dortmanna philippiana Kuntze
Dortmanna tupa (L.) Kuntze
Lobelia bicalcarata (Kuntze) Zahlbr. ex K.Schum.
Lobelia bicalcarata Zahlbr.
Lobelia feuillei hort. ex G.Nicholson
Lobelia mucronata Cav.
Lobelia mucronata f. hookeri (A.DC.) E.Wimm.
Lobelia mucronata f. ovalifolia E.Wimm.
Lobelia serrata Meyen
Lobelia tupa var. berteroi (A.DC.) Reiche
Lobelia tupa var. bicalcarata (Kuntze) E.Wimm.
Lobelia tupa var. montana Reiche
Lobelia tupa var. mucronata (Cav.) Reiche
Lobelia tupa var. pavonii E.Wimm.
Lobelia tupa var. tupa
Rapuntium mucronatum (Cav.) C.Presl
Rapuntium tupa (L.) C.Presl
Tupa berteroi A.DC.
Tupa cavanillesiana G.Don
Tupa feuillei G.Don
Tupa feuillei var. berteroi (A.DC.) Vatke

and 5 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.
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.