Persicaria lapathifolia(L.) Delarbre

pale smartweed

WFO wfo-0000488400 Accepted WFO 2026-06 7 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–g

Persicaria lapathifolia, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. a Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-04-09 / obs. 187329820
Persicaria lapathifolia, photographed by Yurii Basov
fig. b Yurii Basov, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204674652
Persicaria lapathifolia, photographed by Tim Kirsten
fig. c Tim Kirsten, CC0 1.0 / obs. 185802831
Persicaria lapathifolia, photographed by Tim Kirsten
fig. d Tim Kirsten, CC0 1.0 / obs. 182696027
Persicaria lapathifolia, photographed by Michael Andresek
fig. e Michael Andresek, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 172953864
Persicaria lapathifolia, photographed by saltyhiker
fig. f saltyhiker, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 172109765
Persicaria lapathifolia, photographed by Ivan Celikov
fig. g Ivan Celikov, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 166345654

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 = 1,292 observations

Peak flowering in Aug, from 1,292 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 53 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.

  • Dioctis maculatum Raf.
  • Dioctis vernum Raf.
  • Discolenta lapathifolia Raf.
  • Discolenta scabra Raf.
  • Persicaria attenuata subsp. pulchra (Blume) K.L.Wilson
  • Persicaria hypanica (Klokov) Tzvelev
  • Persicaria lapathifolia (L.) Gray
  • Persicaria lapathifolia subsp. andrzejowskiana (Klokov) Soják
  • Persicaria lapathifolia subsp. brittingeri (Opiz) Soják
  • Persicaria lapathifolia subsp. hypanica (Klokov) Soják
  • Persicaria lapathifolia subsp. linicola (Sutulov) Tzvelev
  • Persicaria lapathifolia subsp. nodosa (Pers.) Á.Löve
  • Persicaria lapathifolia subsp. pallida (With.) S.Ekman & T.Knutsson
  • Persicaria lapathifolia subsp. saporoviensis (Klokov) Soják
  • Persicaria lapathifolia var. incana (Roth) S.Ekman & T.Knutsson
  • Persicaria lapathifolia var. lapathifolia
  • Persicaria lapathifolia var. linicola (Sutulov) S.Ekman & T.Knutsson
  • Persicaria lapathifolia var. nodosa (Pers.) Qaiser
  • Persicaria lapathifolia var. tomentosa (Schrank) Tzvelev
  • Persicaria linicola Nenukow
  • Persicaria oneillii Brenckle
  • Persicaria saporoviensis (Klokov) Tzvelev
  • Persicaria scabra (Moench) Moldenke
  • Persicaria scabra var. incana (F.W.Schmidt) Tzvelev

and 29 more.

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.