Spergularia macrotheca (sticky sandspurry)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Spergularia macrotheca, photographed by D Defreese — fig. a D Defreese, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-03-11 / obs. 182503657

Spergularia macrotheca, photographed by Bryn — fig. b Bryn, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 166517777

Spergularia macrotheca, photographed by Peter Brastow — fig. c Peter Brastow, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 123636771

Spergularia macrotheca, photographed by Trevor Van Loon — fig. d Trevor Van Loon, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 122276658

Spergularia macrotheca, photographed by joergmlpts — fig. e joergmlpts, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 58900404

Spergularia macrotheca, photographed by Casey H. Richart — fig. f Casey H. Richart, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 41213446

Spergularia macrotheca, photographed by Jim Riley — fig. g Jim Riley, CC0 1.0 / obs. 61903769

Spergularia macrotheca, photographed by John Hibbard — fig. h John Hibbard, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 10190839

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 Spergularia macrotheca, 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
British Columbia	BRC	NORTHERN AMERICA
California	CAL
Mexican Pacific Is.	MXI
Mexico Northwest	MXN
Oregon	ORE
Washington	WAS

Not drawn on the map: Mexican Pacific Is.. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is listed rather than guessed at.

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 93 in flower of 101 examined

100%

83%

100%

97%

85%

86%

100%

Proportion of examined Spergularia macrotheca in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	2	3	too few examined
Feb	0	0	too few examined
Mar	10	10	100%	72% to 100%
Apr	10	12	83%	55% to 95%
May	9	9	100%	70% to 100%
Jun	30	31	97%	84% to 99%
Jul	11	13	85%	58% to 96%
Aug	6	7	86%	49% to 97%
Sep	6	7	86%	49% to 97%
Oct	5	5	100%	57% to 100%
Nov	3	3	too few examined
Dec	1	1	too few examined

Peak flowering in Mar. Each bar is the share of Spergularia macrotheca 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. 93 of 101 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 4 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 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.

Alsine macrotheca (Hornem. ex Cham. & Schltdl.) House
Arenaria macrotheca Hornem. ex Cham. & Schltdl.
Buda macrotheca (Hornem. ex Cham. & Schltdl.) Kuntze
Lepigonum macrothecum (Hornem. ex Cham. & Schltdl.) Kindb.
Lepigonum macrothecum Fisch. & C.A.Mey.
Spergularia macrotheca var. macrotheca
Tissa leucantha Greene
Tissa leucantha var. glabra Davidson
Tissa macrotheca (Hornem. ex Cham. & Schltdl.) Britton

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.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
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.