Polygala myrtifoliaL.

myrtle-leaf milkwort

WFO wfo-0000488587 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Polygala myrtifolia, photographed by Grey Smith
fig. a Grey Smith, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-24 / obs. 200184983
Polygala myrtifolia, photographed by Justin Ponder
fig. b Justin Ponder, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 193747588
Polygala myrtifolia, photographed by linkie
fig. c linkie, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195402514
Polygala myrtifolia, photographed by Caroline Voget
fig. d Caroline Voget, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 194664421
Polygala myrtifolia, photographed by linkie
fig. e linkie, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 194983931
Polygala myrtifolia, photographed by Ann Bentley
fig. f Ann Bentley, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 186460415
Polygala myrtifolia, photographed by Shaun Swanepoel
fig. g Shaun Swanepoel, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 168405095
Polygala myrtifolia, photographed by Peter Crowcroft
fig. h Peter Crowcroft, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 165725901

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 5 botanical countries

Regions where Polygala myrtifolia is native: Cape Provinces, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho, Northern Provinces Cape ProvincesFree StateKwaZulu-NatalLesothoNorthern Provinces
Native distribution of Polygala myrtifolia, 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
Cape Provinces CPP AFRICA
Free State OFS
KwaZulu-Natal NAT
Lesotho LES
Northern Provinces TVL

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.

Flowering 636 in flower of 666 examined

Peak flowering in Sep. Each bar is the share of Polygala myrtifolia observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 636 of 666 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

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.

  • Polygala amoena Thunb.
  • Polygala clutioides Burch. ex DC.
  • Polygala ligularis Ker Gawl.
  • Polygala linkiana Sweet
  • Polygala pinifolia Poir.
  • Psychanthus myrtifolius (L.) Raf.
  • Psychanthus myrtifolius (L.) Spach

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.