Retama sphaerocarpa

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Retama sphaerocarpa, photographed by scolym — fig. c scolym, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199187287

Retama sphaerocarpa, photographed by Elizabete Marchante — fig. d Elizabete Marchante, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 197563073

Retama sphaerocarpa, photographed by mchaquis — fig. g mchaquis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 190402282

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 6 botanical countries

Native distribution of Retama sphaerocarpa, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Algeria	ALG	AFRICA
Mauritania	MTN
Morocco	MOR
Tunisia	TUN
Portugal	POR	EUROPE
Spain	SPA

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 160 in flower of 322 examined

47%

88%

85%

18%

Proportion of examined Retama sphaerocarpa in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	0	23	0%	0% to 14%
Feb	0	10	0%	0% to 28%
Mar	0	10	0%	0% to 28%
Apr	24	51	47%	34% to 60%
May	95	108	88%	80% to 93%
Jun	39	46	85%	72% to 92%
Jul	2	11	18%	5% to 48%
Aug	0	15	0%	0% to 20%
Sep	0	19	0%	0% to 17%
Oct	0	13	0%	0% to 23%
Nov	0	10	0%	0% to 28%
Dec	0	6	0%	0% to 39%

Peak flowering in May. Each bar is the share of Retama sphaerocarpa 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. 160 of 322 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 12 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.

Boelia sphaerocarpa (L.) Webb
Boelia sphaerocarpa var. mesogaea Webb
Genista sphaerocarpa (L.) Lam.
Lygos sphaerocarpa (L.) Heywood
Lygos sphaerocarpa (L.) Heywood
Retama atlantica Pomel
Retama lutea Raf.
Retama sphaerocarpa f. atlantica (Pomel) Batt.
Retama sphaerocarpa var. atlantica (Pomel) Maire
Retama sphaerocarpa var. mesogaea (Webb) Willk.
Spartium grandiflorum Salisb.
Spartium sphaerocarpum L.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
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.