Polygonum perfoliatumL.

mile-a-minute weed

WFO wfo-0000489147 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Polygonum perfoliatum, photographed by Erin Lalime
fig. a Erin Lalime, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-04 / obs. 203493694
Polygonum perfoliatum, photographed by chinniehaha
fig. b chinniehaha, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203675156
Polygonum perfoliatum, photographed by 雲一百香果
fig. c 雲一百香果, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195906549
Polygonum perfoliatum, photographed by mefisher
fig. d mefisher, CC0 1.0 / obs. 191963650
Polygonum perfoliatum, photographed by mefisher
fig. e mefisher, CC0 1.0 / obs. 205024384
Polygonum perfoliatum, photographed by Forest Botial-Jarvis
fig. f Forest Botial-Jarvis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 162321161
Polygonum perfoliatum, photographed by Navin Sasikumar
fig. g Navin Sasikumar, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 194710878
Polygonum perfoliatum, photographed by Dilrukshan Priyantha Wijesinghe
fig. h Dilrukshan Priyantha Wijesinghe, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 162999015

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 = 51 observations

Peak flowering in Sep, from 51 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 8 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.

  • Ampelygonum perfoliatum (L.) Roberty & Vautier
  • Chylocalyx perfoliatus Hassk.
  • Echinocaulon perfoliatus (L.) Hassk.
  • Fagopyrum perfoliatum (L.) Raf.
  • Persicaria perfoliata (L.) H.Gross
  • Polygonum arifolium var. perfoliatum L.
  • Tracaulon perfoliatum (L.) Greene
  • Truellum perfoliatum (L.) Soják

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.