Senna hebecarpa(Fernald) H.S.Irwin & Barneby

American sennawild senna

WFO wfo-0000175226 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Senna hebecarpa, photographed by Ryan Sorrells
fig. a Ryan Sorrells, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-10-28 / obs. 166364489
Senna hebecarpa, photographed by Tom Lazar
fig. b Tom Lazar, CC0 1.0 / obs. 164318286
Senna hebecarpa, photographed by Jay Brasher
fig. c Jay Brasher, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 161143794
Senna hebecarpa, photographed by Ryan Sorrells
fig. d Ryan Sorrells, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 151669374
Senna hebecarpa, photographed by Ryan Sorrells
fig. e Ryan Sorrells, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 151668915
Senna hebecarpa, photographed by Tom Field
fig. f Tom Field, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 150987422
Senna hebecarpa, photographed by Katja Schulz
fig. g Katja Schulz, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 149293466
Senna hebecarpa, photographed by Ryan Sorrells
fig. h Ryan Sorrells, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 148640296

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 21 botanical countries

Regions where Senna hebecarpa is native: Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Ontario, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin ConnecticutIllinoisIndianaKentuckyMarylandMassachusettsMichiganMissouriNew HampshireNew JerseyNew YorkNorth CarolinaOhioOntarioPennsylvaniaTennesseeVermontVirginiaWest VirginiaWisconsin Delaware
Native distribution of Senna hebecarpa, 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
Connecticut CNT NORTHERN AMERICA
Delaware DEL
Illinois ILL
Indiana INI
Kentucky KTY
Maryland MRY
Massachusetts MAS
Michigan MIC
Missouri MSO
New Hampshire NWH
New Jersey NWJ
New York NWY
North Carolina NCA
Ohio OHI
Ontario ONT
Pennsylvania PEN
Tennessee TEN
Vermont VER
Virginia VRG
West Virginia WVA
Wisconsin WIS

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 197 in flower of 330 examined

Peak flowering in Jul. Each bar is the share of Senna hebecarpa 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. 197 of 330 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 2 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.

Also published as 3 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.

  • Cassia hebecarpa Fernald
  • Cassia hebecarpa var. longipila E.L.Braun
  • Senna hebecarpa var. longipila (E.L.Braun) C.F.Reed

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.