Malacothrix saxatilis(Nutt.) Torr. & A.Gray

Cliff Aster

WFO wfo-0000136876 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Malacothrix saxatilis, photographed by Madeleine Claire
fig. a Madeleine Claire, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-04 / obs. 203599119
Malacothrix saxatilis, photographed by Vasily Reinkymov
fig. b Vasily Reinkymov, CC0 1.0 / obs. 196093105
Malacothrix saxatilis, photographed by velodrome
fig. c velodrome, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 179193617
Malacothrix saxatilis, photographed by Diego Blanco
fig. d Diego Blanco, CC0 1.0 / obs. 174664757
Malacothrix saxatilis, photographed by Ryan Donnelly
fig. e Ryan Donnelly, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 175676962
Malacothrix saxatilis, photographed by George Williams
fig. f George Williams, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 162188193
Malacothrix saxatilis, photographed by Lightning Star Sky / Skyler Noah Wall
fig. g Lightning Star Sky / Skyler Noah Wall, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 172514980
Malacothrix saxatilis, photographed by George Williams
fig. h George Williams, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 158474530

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.

Flowering n = 516 observations

Peak flowering in May, from 516 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 14 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.

  • Hieracium californicum DC.
  • Leucoseris saxatilis Nutt.
  • Leucoseris tenuifolia Nutt.
  • Malacothrix altissima Greene
  • Malacothrix arachnoidea McGregor
  • Malacothrix arachnoidea E.A.McGregor
  • Malacothrix commutata Torr. & A.Gray
  • Malacothrix implicata Eastw.
  • Malacothrix saxatilis var. altissima (Greene) Ferris
  • Malacothrix saxatilis var. arachnoidea (McGregor) E.W.Williams
  • Malacothrix saxatilis var. commutata (Torr. & A.Gray) Ferris
  • Malacothrix saxatilis var. tenuifolia (Nutt.) A.Gray
  • Malacothrix saxatilis var. tenuissima Munz
  • Sonchus californicus Hook. & Arn.

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.