Stephanomeria exigua (small wirelettuce)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Stephanomeria exigua, photographed by George Williams — fig. a George Williams, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-12 / obs. 205625069

Stephanomeria exigua, photographed by Kimball Garrett — fig. b Kimball Garrett, CC0 1.0 / obs. 195971115

Stephanomeria exigua, photographed by Bobby McCabe — fig. c Bobby McCabe, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 154446346

Stephanomeria exigua, photographed by Amy — fig. d Amy, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 106067712

Stephanomeria exigua, photographed by Millie Basden — fig. e Millie Basden, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 99895160

Stephanomeria exigua, photographed by Nolan Exe — fig. g Nolan Exe, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 81716512

Stephanomeria exigua, photographed by janeyair — fig. h janeyair, CC0 1.0 / obs. 54908805

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 12 botanical countries

Native distribution of Stephanomeria exigua, 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
Arizona	ARI	NORTHERN AMERICA
California	CAL
Colorado	COL
Idaho	IDA
Mexico Northeast	MXE
Mexico Northwest	MXN
Nevada	NEV
New Mexico	NWM
Oregon	ORE
Texas	TEX
Utah	UTA
Washington	WAS

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 350 in flower of 381 examined

83%

67%

81%

88%

90%

94%

100%

98%

100%

Proportion of examined Stephanomeria exigua in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	5	6	83%	44% to 97%
Feb	4	6	67%	30% to 90%
Mar	22	27	81%	63% to 92%
Apr	58	66	88%	78% to 94%
May	94	105	90%	82% to 94%
Jun	29	31	94%	79% to 98%
Jul	15	16	94%	72% to 99%
Aug	17	17	100%	82% to 100%
Sep	42	43	98%	88% to 100%
Oct	33	33	100%	90% to 100%
Nov	18	18	100%	82% to 100%
Dec	13	13	100%	77% to 100%

Peak flowering in Aug. Each bar is the share of Stephanomeria exigua 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. 350 of 381 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 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.

Hemiptilium bigelovii A.Gray
Hemiptilium schottii A.Gray
Lygodesmia bigelovii (A.Gray) Shinners
Ptiloria bigelovii (A.Gray) Wooton & Standl.
Ptiloria coronaria Greene
Ptiloria exigua (Nutt.) Greene
Ptiloria exigua var. exigua
Ptiloria pentachaeta (D.C.Eaton) Greene
Ptiloria schottii (A.Gray) Greene
Stephanomeria carotifera Hoover
Stephanomeria coronaria Greene
Stephanomeria exigua subsp. pentachaeta D.C.Eaton
Stephanomeria exigua var. carotifera (Hoover) B.L.Turner
Stephanomeria exigua var. coronaria (Greene) Jeps.
Stephanomeria exigua var. deanei J.F.Macbr.
Stephanomeria exigua var. exigua
Stephanomeria exigua var. macrocarpa (Gottlieb) B.L.Turner
Stephanomeria exigua var. pentachaeta (D.C.Eaton) H.M.Hall
Stephanomeria oregonensis Gand.
Stephanomeria pentachaeta D.C.Eaton
Stephanomeria schottii (A.Gray) A.Gray

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.