Stenandrium dulce(Cav.) Nees

sweet shaggytuft

WFO wfo-0001044785 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Stenandrium dulce, photographed by Jay Horn
fig. a Jay Horn, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-03-17 / obs. 184977670

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 Stenandrium dulce is native: Florida, Georgia, Mexico Central, Mexico Gulf, Mexico Northeast, Mexico Northwest, Mexico Southeast, Mexico Southwest, Texas, Argentina Northeast, Argentina Northwest, Bolivia, Brazil South, Brazil West-Central, Chile Central, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay FloridaGeorgiaMexico CentralMexico GulfMexico NortheastMexico NorthwestMexico SoutheastMexico SouthwestTexasArgentina NortheastArgentina NorthwestBoliviaBrazil SouthBrazil West-CentralChile CentralColombiaEcuadorGuatemalaParaguayPeruUruguay
Native distribution of Stenandrium dulce, 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
Bolivia BOL
Brazil South BZS
Brazil West-Central BZC
Chile Central CLC
Colombia CLM
Ecuador ECU
Guatemala GUA
Paraguay PAR
Peru PER
Uruguay URU
Florida FLA NORTHERN AMERICA
Georgia GEO
Mexico Central MXC
Mexico Gulf MXG
Mexico Northeast MXE
Mexico Northwest MXN
Mexico Southeast MXT
Mexico Southwest MXS
Texas TEX

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 124 in flower of 127 examined

Proportion of examined Stenandrium dulce in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 10 10 100% 72% to 100%
Feb 14 14 100% 78% to 100%
Mar 11 11 100% 74% to 100%
Apr 13 13 100% 77% to 100%
May 5 5 100% 57% to 100%
Jun 8 8 100% 68% to 100%
Jul 6 7 86% 49% to 97%
Aug 3 4 too few examined
Sep 5 5 100% 57% to 100%
Oct 22 22 100% 85% to 100%
Nov 10 11 91% 62% to 98%
Dec 17 17 100% 82% to 100%

Peak flowering in Jan. Each bar is the share of Stenandrium dulce 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. 124 of 127 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. One month has fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for it. 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 611 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 0.4 °C 7.6 °C 16.2 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 17.4 °C 27.3 °C 32.0 °C
Annual rainfall 509 mm 1,132 mm 1,546 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 4 mm 80 mm 257 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 611 research-grade observations of Stenandrium dulce 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 19 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.

  • Caldenbachia macrogranum Nees
  • Crossandra fascicularis Benth.
  • Gerardia dulcis (Cav.) S.F.Blake
  • Gerardia dulcis var. floridana (A.Gray) S.F.Blake
  • Gerardia floridana (A.Gray) Small
  • Nierembergia prunellifolia Dunal
  • Ruellia acaulis Ruiz ex Nees
  • Ruellia dulcis Cav.
  • Stenandrium fasciculare (Benth.) Wassh.
  • Stenandrium floridanum (A.Gray) Small
  • Stenandrium guatemalense Leonard
  • Stenandrium macraganum Nees
  • Stenandrium macrayanum Nees
  • Stenandrium mexicanum Leonard
  • Stenandrium parodii Bridar.
  • Stenandrium platense Arrillaga & Olano
  • Stenandrium trinerve Nees
  • Stenandrium trinerve var. exscapum Nees
  • Stenandrium trinerve var. subexscapum Nees

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.