Plectocephalus americanus (American basketflower)

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Plectocephalus americanus, photographed by Chris Hughes — fig. a Chris Hughes, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-03 / obs. 203311178

Plectocephalus americanus, photographed by Catherine C. Galley — fig. b Catherine C. Galley, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204299586

Plectocephalus americanus, photographed by Michelle W. （鍾偉瑋） — fig. d Michelle W. （鍾偉瑋）, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195203730

Plectocephalus americanus, photographed by Cleveland Powell — fig. e Cleveland Powell, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 192011344

Plectocephalus americanus, photographed by Isabel Retiz — fig. g Isabel Retiz, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 173980728

Plectocephalus americanus, photographed by Scott Holt — fig. h Scott Holt, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 195409097

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 = 1,819 observations

191

694

700

155

Flowering observations of Plectocephalus americanus by month
Month	Observations
Jan	4
Feb	1
Mar	5
Apr	191
May	694
Jun	700
Jul	155
Aug	30
Sep	10
Oct	17
Nov	6
Dec	6

Peak flowering in Jun, from 1,819 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.

Centaurea americana Nutt.
Centaurea mexicana DC.
Centaurea nuttallii Spreng.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
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.