Polygaloides paucifolia(Willd.) J.R.Abbott

fringed polygala

WFO wfo-0001041907 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Polygaloides paucifolia, photographed by Kathleen Houlahan Chayer
fig. a Kathleen Houlahan Chayer, CC0 1.0 / 2022-06-08 / obs. 204618791
Polygaloides paucifolia, photographed by Kathleen Houlahan Chayer
fig. b Kathleen Houlahan Chayer, CC0 1.0 / obs. 204618623
Polygaloides paucifolia, photographed by Carol Ann Vermeer
fig. c Carol Ann Vermeer, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203734814
Polygaloides paucifolia, photographed by Liren Varghese
fig. d Liren Varghese, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202327412
Polygaloides paucifolia, photographed by Aundrea Schneider
fig. e Aundrea Schneider, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201721671
Polygaloides paucifolia, photographed by Mary Krieger
fig. f Mary Krieger, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201923653
Polygaloides paucifolia, photographed by Margaret Northfield
fig. g Margaret Northfield, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201895982
Polygaloides paucifolia, photographed by Liren Varghese
fig. h Liren Varghese, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204279542

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 = 4,918 observations

Peak flowering in May, from 4,918 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 9 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 commutata Sweet
  • Polygala paucifolia Willd.
  • Polygala paucifolia f. paucifolia
  • Polygala purpurea W.T.Aiton
  • Polygala uniflora Michx.
  • Trichlisperma grandiflorum Raf.
  • Trichlisperma paucifolium Nieuwl.
  • Triclisperma grandiflora Raf.
  • Triclisperma paucifolia Nieuwl.

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.