Sisyrinchium chilenseHook.

swordleaf blue-eyed grass

WFO wfo-0000786346 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Sisyrinchium chilense, photographed by Jairo Pinto
fig. a Jairo Pinto, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-03-22 / obs. 117891127

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 11 botanical countries

Regions where Sisyrinchium chilense is native: Falkland Is., Argentina Northeast, Argentina Northwest, Argentina South, Bolivia, Chile Central, Chile North, Chile South, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru Falkland Is.Argentina NortheastArgentina NorthwestArgentina SouthBoliviaChile CentralChile NorthChile SouthColombiaEcuadorPeru
Native distribution of Sisyrinchium chilense, 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.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Argentina Northeast AGE SOUTHERN AMERICA
Argentina Northwest AGW
Argentina South AGS
Bolivia BOL
Chile Central CLC
Chile North CLN
Chile South CLS
Colombia CLM
Ecuador ECU
Peru PER
Falkland Is. FAL ANTARCTICA

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 46 in flower of 46 examined

Proportion of examined Sisyrinchium chilense in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 9 9 100% 70% to 100%
Feb 2 2 too few examined
Mar 5 5 100% 57% to 100%
Apr 9 9 100% 70% to 100%
May 2 2 too few examined
Jun 1 1 too few examined
Jul 0 0 too few examined
Aug 1 1 too few examined
Sep 1 1 too few examined
Oct 4 4 too few examined
Nov 7 7 100% 65% to 100%
Dec 5 5 100% 57% to 100%

Peak flowering in Jan. Each bar is the share of Sisyrinchium chilense 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. 46 of 46 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 75 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -11.3 °C 3.3 °C 10.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 13.6 °C 18.0 °C 29.0 °C
Annual rainfall 421 mm 962 mm 1,492 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 5 mm 80 mm 186 mm

It is found where winters bring hard frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 75 research-grade observations of Sisyrinchium chilense 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 21 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.

  • Bermudiana bermudiana f. coerulea Kuntze
  • Bermudiana bermudiana f. flavida Kuntze
  • Bermudiana bermudiana f. lactea Kuntze
  • Bermudiana bermudiana f. lilacina Kuntze
  • Bermudiana bermudiana f. rubra Kuntze
  • Bermudiana bermudiana f. violacea Kuntze
  • Bermudiana bermudiana var. chilensis (Hook.) Kuntze
  • Bermudiana chilensis (Hook.) Kuntze
  • Sisyrinchium berteroi Steud. ex Baker
  • Sisyrinchium chilense var. uniflorum L.U.Molina
  • Sisyrinchium chilense var. uniflorum (Gay ex Phil.) L.E.Navas & Urra
  • Sisyrinchium chilense var. urubambense Vargas
  • Sisyrinchium graminifolium Bertero ex Steud.
  • Sisyrinchium herrerae Vargas
  • Sisyrinchium iridifolium subsp. valdivianum (Phil.) Ravenna
  • Sisyrinchium micranthum subsp. valdivianum (Phil.) Ravenna
  • Sisyrinchium quinquevulnerum Dombey ex Klatt
  • Sisyrinchium ramosum var. chilense (Hook.) Herb.
  • Sisyrinchium uniflorum Gay ex Phil.
  • Sisyrinchium valdivianum Phil.
  • Sisyrinchium vulgare Herter

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.