Parkinsonia aculeataL.

Mexican palo verde

WFO wfo-0000170206 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Parkinsonia aculeata, photographed by Rich Sommer
fig. a Rich Sommer, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-02 / obs. 195916078
Parkinsonia aculeata, photographed by Dominic Gentilcore
fig. b Dominic Gentilcore, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199163666
Parkinsonia aculeata, photographed by rachelbuckthorn
fig. c rachelbuckthorn, CC0 1.0 / obs. 197699803
Parkinsonia aculeata, photographed by Brady Reed
fig. d Brady Reed, CC0 1.0 / obs. 193330519
Parkinsonia aculeata, photographed by Neesy Tompkins
fig. e Neesy Tompkins, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 193218846
Parkinsonia aculeata, photographed by Eduardo Luis Beltrocco
fig. f Eduardo Luis Beltrocco, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195914511
Parkinsonia aculeata, photographed by Lauu
fig. g Lauu, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 193660894
Parkinsonia aculeata, photographed by Lauu
fig. h Lauu, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 193641350

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 = 2,401 observations

Peak flowering in Apr, from 2,401 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 3 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.

  • Parkinsonia inermis Spreng.
  • Parkinsonia spinosa Kunth
  • Parkinsonia thornberi M.E.Jones

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.