Thymophylla setifolia (Texas pricklyleaf)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Thymophylla setifolia, photographed by Alan Rockefeller — fig. a Alan Rockefeller, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-04-09 / obs. 187199928

Thymophylla setifolia, photographed by Norveig — fig. b Norveig, CC0 1.0 / obs. 168294386

Thymophylla setifolia, photographed by José Belem Hernández Díaz — fig. c José Belem Hernández Díaz, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 148865517

Thymophylla setifolia, photographed by Alexis López Hernández — fig. d Alexis López Hernández, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 90858207

Thymophylla setifolia, photographed by Eric Knight — fig. e Eric Knight, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 57285530

Thymophylla setifolia, photographed by Leticia Jiménez Hernández — fig. f Leticia Jiménez Hernández, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 53676011

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 7 botanical countries

Native distribution of Thymophylla setifolia, 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
Mexico Central	MXC	NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Gulf	MXG
Mexico Northeast	MXE
Mexico Northwest	MXN
Mexico Southwest	MXS
New Mexico	NWM
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 154 in flower of 178 examined

83%

80%

100%

78%

67%

71%

79%

94%

93%

96%

82%

89%

Proportion of examined Thymophylla setifolia in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	5	6	83%	44% to 97%
Feb	12	15	80%	55% to 93%
Mar	19	19	100%	83% to 100%
Apr	14	18	78%	55% to 91%
May	6	9	67%	35% to 88%
Jun	5	7	71%	36% to 92%
Jul	15	19	79%	57% to 91%
Aug	16	17	94%	73% to 99%
Sep	13	14	93%	69% to 99%
Oct	27	28	96%	82% to 99%
Nov	14	17	82%	59% to 94%
Dec	8	9	89%	56% to 98%

Peak flowering in Mar. Each bar is the share of Thymophylla setifolia 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. 154 of 178 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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 188 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	1.0 °C	5.8 °C	8.6 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	22.1 °C	26.7 °C	31.7 °C
Annual rainfall	323 mm	480 mm	730 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	24 mm	41 mm	56 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 188 research-grade observations of Thymophylla setifolia 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 11 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.

Dyssodia setifolia B.L.Rob.
Dyssodia setifolia var. greggii (A.Gray) M.C.Johnst.
Dyssodia setifolia var. radiata (A.Gray) Strother
Dyssodia setifolia var. setifolia
Hymenatherum setifolium A.Gray
Hymenatherum setifolium var. radiatum Brandegee
Hymenatherum setifolium var. setifolium
Thymophylla greggii A.Gray
Thymophylla greggii var. greggii
Thymophylla greggii var. radiata A.Gray
Thymophylla setifolia var. radiata (A.Gray) Strother

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.