Maianthemum canadenseDesf.

Canada mayflower

WFO wfo-0000691281 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Maianthemum canadense, photographed by Kalvin Chan
fig. a Kalvin Chan, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-10 / obs. 204987434
Maianthemum canadense, photographed by Mary Krieger
fig. b Mary Krieger, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205023555
Maianthemum canadense, photographed by Pierre Cartier
fig. c Pierre Cartier, CC0 1.0 / obs. 205008236
Maianthemum canadense, photographed by Annie Weissman
fig. d Annie Weissman, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204915420
Maianthemum canadense, photographed by Mary Krieger
fig. e Mary Krieger, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205659779
Maianthemum canadense, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. f Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 203496259
Maianthemum canadense, photographed by samuellegresley
fig. g samuellegresley, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204085325
Maianthemum canadense, photographed by Carter Dorscht
fig. h Carter Dorscht, CC0 1.0 / obs. 203862575

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.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 5,321 observations

Peak flowering in May, from 5,321 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 21 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.

  • Convallaria canadensis (Desf.) Poir.
  • Maianthemum bifolium f. canadense (Desf.) Farw.
  • Maianthemum canadense f. canadense
  • Maianthemum canadense f. oswaldii Moldenke
  • Maianthemum canadense f. trifolium (Pursh) Vict.
  • Maianthemum canadense subsp. interius (Fernald) Á.Löve & D.Löve
  • Maianthemum canadense var. canadense
  • Maianthemum canadense var. carolinianum Butters
  • Maianthemum canadense var. interius Fernald
  • Maianthemum canadense var. ovale (Pursh) Butters
  • Smilacina bifolia var. canadensis (Desf.) A.Gray
  • Smilacina canadensis (Desf.) Pursh
  • Smilacina canadensis var. ovalis Pursh
  • Smilacina canadensis var. trifolia Pursh
  • Styrandra amplexicaulis Raf.
  • Styrandra canadensis (Desf.) Raf.
  • Unifolium bifolium var. ovale (Pursh) Farw.
  • Unifolium bifolium var. trifolium (Pursh) Farw.
  • Unifolium canadense (Desf.) Greene
  • Unifolium canadense var. interius House
  • Unifolium eschscholtzianum W.Wight ex J.P.Anderson

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.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.