Ptilimnium capillaceum(Michx.) Raf.

herbwilliam

WFO wfo-0001263017 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Ptilimnium capillaceum, photographed by Amber M. King
fig. a Amber M. King, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-02 / obs. 194488752
Ptilimnium capillaceum, photographed by Arthur Windsor
fig. b Arthur Windsor, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195565103
Ptilimnium capillaceum, photographed by Amber M. King
fig. c Amber M. King, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 192030942
Ptilimnium capillaceum, photographed by Michelle Sevcovas
fig. d Michelle Sevcovas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 190045639
Ptilimnium capillaceum, photographed by Claire Herzog
fig. e Claire Herzog, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 188153986
Ptilimnium capillaceum, photographed by Josiah Londerée
fig. f Josiah Londerée, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 187360987
Ptilimnium capillaceum, photographed by Josiah Londerée
fig. g Josiah Londerée, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 187361390
Ptilimnium capillaceum, photographed by Josiah Londerée
fig. h Josiah Londerée, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 186305424

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 27 botanical countries

Regions where Ptilimnium capillaceum is native: Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode I., South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Puerto Rico AlabamaArkansasConnecticutFloridaGeorgiaKentuckyLouisianaMarylandMassachusettsMississippiMissouriNew JerseyNew YorkNorth CarolinaOklahomaPennsylvaniaSouth CarolinaTennesseeTexasVirginiaCubaDominican RepublicHaitiPuerto Rico DelawareDistrict of ColumbiaRhode I.
Native distribution of Ptilimnium capillaceum, 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. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Alabama ALA NORTHERN AMERICA
Arkansas ARK
Connecticut CNT
Delaware DEL
District of Columbia WDC
Florida FLA
Georgia GEO
Kentucky KTY
Louisiana LOU
Maryland MRY
Massachusetts MAS
Mississippi MSI
Missouri MSO
New Jersey NWJ
New York NWY
North Carolina NCA
Oklahoma OKL
Pennsylvania PEN
Rhode I. RHO
South Carolina SCA
Tennessee TEN
Texas TEX
Virginia VRG
Cuba CUB SOUTHERN AMERICA
Dominican Republic DOM
Haiti HAI
Puerto Rico PUE

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 171 in flower of 205 examined

Peak flowering in May. Each bar is the share of Ptilimnium capillaceum 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. 171 of 205 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 7 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. 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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 1,655 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 0.7 °C 11.0 °C 16.7 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 28.8 °C 31.5 °C 33.4 °C
Annual rainfall 1,155 mm 1,397 mm 1,770 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 135 mm 199 mm 370 mm

It is found where winters are cool but frost is light or absent. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,655 research-grade observations of Ptilimnium capillaceum that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

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.

  • Ammi capillaceum Michx.
  • Ammi majus Walter
  • Ammi rubricaule Hornem.
  • Discopleura capillacea DC.
  • Discopleura juncea (Raf.) Steud.
  • Discopleura major Britton, Sterns & Poggenb.
  • Ptilimnium junceum Raf.
  • Sison capillaceum Spreng.
  • Sison rubricaule (Hornem.) Eaton & Wright

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.