Lycium californicum (California desert-thorn)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Lycium californicum, photographed by Dan Horowitz — fig. a Dan Horowitz, CC0 1.0 / 2022-04-02 / obs. 186153638

Lycium californicum, photographed by Trevor Van Loon — fig. b Trevor Van Loon, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 178401545

Lycium californicum, photographed by James C. Davis — fig. c James C. Davis, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 177621586

Lycium californicum, photographed by sdash — fig. d sdash, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 175676984

Lycium californicum, photographed by laiet17 — fig. e laiet17, CC0 1.0 / obs. 175565047

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 Lycium californicum, 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
Arizona	ARI	NORTHERN AMERICA
California	CAL
Mexican Pacific Is.	MXI
Mexico Northeast	MXE
Mexico Northwest	MXN

Not drawn on the map: Mexican Pacific Is.. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is listed rather than guessed at.

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 59 in flower of 85 examined

85%

88%

67%

86%

30%

Proportion of examined Lycium californicum in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	11	13	85%	58% to 96%
Feb	15	17	88%	66% to 97%
Mar	10	15	67%	42% to 85%
Apr	6	9	67%	35% to 88%
May	1	3	too few examined
Jun	0	2	too few examined
Jul	2	2	too few examined
Aug	0	0	too few examined
Sep	4	4	too few examined
Oct	1	3	too few examined
Nov	6	7	86%	49% to 97%
Dec	3	10	30%	11% to 60%

Peak flowering in Feb. Each bar is the share of Lycium californicum 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. 59 of 85 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 6 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 7 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.

Lycium californicum subsp. californicum
Lycium californicum subsp. carinatum (S.Watson) Felger
Lycium californicum var. arizonicum A.Gray
Lycium californicum var. californicum
Lycium carolinianum subsp. californicum (Nutt. ex A.Gray) A.Terracc.
Lycium carolinianum var. arizonicum (A.Gray) A.Terracc.
Lycium carolinianum var. californicum A.Terracc.

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.