Polygala virgataThunb.

WFO wfo-0001100419 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Polygala virgata, photographed by Justin Ponder
fig. a Justin Ponder, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-30 / obs. 202116850
Polygala virgata, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. b Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 203908657
Polygala virgata, photographed by Thomas Mesaglio
fig. c Thomas Mesaglio, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 193492188
Polygala virgata, photographed by Di Turner
fig. d Di Turner, CC0 1.0 / obs. 195312910
Polygala virgata, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. e Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 189186862
Polygala virgata, photographed by Augustin Soulard
fig. f Augustin Soulard, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 190823742
Polygala virgata, photographed by Greg Tasney
fig. g Greg Tasney, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 182533044
Polygala virgata, photographed by Greg Tasney
fig. h Greg Tasney, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 176114029

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 13 botanical countries

Regions where Polygala virgata is native: Cape Provinces, DR Congo, Eswatini, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Northern Provinces, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe Cape ProvincesDR CongoEswatiniFree StateKwaZulu-NatalLesothoMalawiMozambiqueNamibiaNorthern ProvincesTanzaniaZambiaZimbabwe
Native distribution of Polygala virgata, 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
DR Congo ZAI
Eswatini SWZ
Free State OFS
KwaZulu-Natal NAT
Lesotho LES
Malawi MLW
Mozambique MOZ
Namibia NAM
Northern Provinces TVL
Tanzania TAN
Zambia ZAM
Zimbabwe ZIM

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 198 in flower of 205 examined

Peak flowering in Jan. Each bar is the share of Polygala virgata 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. 198 of 205 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 5 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 cernua Thunb.
  • Polygala genistoides Poir.
  • Polygala genistopsis Chodat
  • Polygala spartioides Burch. ex Eckl. & Zeyh.
  • Polygala sprengeliana Eckl. & Zeyh.

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. 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.