Mentzelia albescens(Gillies ex Arn.) Benth. & Hook.f. ex Griseb.

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WFO wfo-0001073640 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Mentzelia albescens, photographed by Hugo Hulsberg
fig. a Hugo Hulsberg, CC0 1.0 / 2022-02-20 / obs. 182976430
Mentzelia albescens, photographed by Eric Knight
fig. b Eric Knight, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 129389372
Mentzelia albescens, photographed by Guillermo Debandi
fig. c Guillermo Debandi, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 108006507
Mentzelia albescens, photographed by Guillermo Debandi
fig. d Guillermo Debandi, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 107758285
Mentzelia albescens, photographed by Guillermo Debandi
fig. e Guillermo Debandi, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 106572176
Mentzelia albescens, photographed by Guillermo Debandi
fig. f Guillermo Debandi, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 98120838
Mentzelia albescens, photographed by Guillermo Debandi
fig. g Guillermo Debandi, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 98120861
Mentzelia albescens, photographed by Guillermo Debandi
fig. h Guillermo Debandi, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 62455559

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 8 botanical countries

Regions where Mentzelia albescens is native: Oklahoma, Texas, Argentina Northeast, Argentina Northwest, Argentina South, Chile Central, Chile North, Uruguay OklahomaTexasArgentina NortheastArgentina NorthwestArgentina SouthChile CentralChile NorthUruguay
Native distribution of Mentzelia albescens, 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
Argentina Northeast AGE SOUTHERN AMERICA
Argentina Northwest AGW
Argentina South AGS
Chile Central CLC
Chile North CLN
Uruguay URU
Oklahoma OKL NORTHERN AMERICA
Texas TEX

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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 166 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -2.0 °C 3.4 °C 7.0 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 24.0 °C 32.0 °C 35.2 °C
Annual rainfall 234 mm 635 mm 1,038 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 28 mm 81 mm 191 mm

It is found where winters bring light frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 166 research-grade observations of Mentzelia albescens that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.

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.

  • Bartonia albescens Gillies ex Arn.
  • Bartonia sinuata C.Presl
  • Bartonia wrightii (A.Gray) Walp.
  • Mentzelia wrightii A.Gray
  • Nuttallia albescens (Gillies ex Arn.) Standl.
  • Nuttallia wrightii (A.Gray) Greene
  • Touterea wrightii (A.Gray) Rydb.

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. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. 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.