Turnera subulataSm.

Politician's FlowerWhite AlderWhite Butter Cup

WFO wfo-0000457711 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Turnera subulata, photographed by Breno Figueiredo
fig. a Breno Figueiredo, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-22 / obs. 199624604
Turnera subulata, photographed by Anthony Batista
fig. b Anthony Batista, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 197228514
Turnera subulata, photographed by Maria Janeiro
fig. c Maria Janeiro, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 182220456
Turnera subulata, photographed by Helio Lourencini
fig. d Helio Lourencini, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 177858164
Turnera subulata, photographed by Melissa McMasters
fig. e Melissa McMasters, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 176807977
Turnera subulata, photographed by Helio Lourencini
fig. f Helio Lourencini, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 174560395
Turnera subulata, photographed by Sandipan Das
fig. g Sandipan Das, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 175214936
Turnera subulata, photographed by Sandipan Das
fig. h Sandipan Das, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 175214776

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 13 botanical countries

Regions where Turnera subulata is native: Bolivia, Brazil North, Brazil Northeast, Brazil South, Brazil Southeast, Brazil West-Central, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Suriname, Venezuela, Windward Is. BoliviaBrazil NorthBrazil NortheastBrazil SouthBrazil SoutheastBrazil West-CentralColombiaEcuadorFrench GuianaGuyanaSurinameVenezuela Windward Is.
Native distribution of Turnera subulata, 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. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Bolivia BOL SOUTHERN AMERICA
Brazil North BZN
Brazil Northeast BZE
Brazil South BZS
Brazil Southeast BZL
Brazil West-Central BZC
Colombia CLM
Ecuador ECU
French Guiana FRG
Guyana GUY
Suriname SUR
Venezuela VEN
Windward Is. WIN

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 1,246 in flower of 1,274 examined

Peak flowering in Jun. Each bar is the share of Turnera subulata 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. 1,246 of 1,274 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 6 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.

  • Turnera elegans Otto
  • Turnera mollis Kunth
  • Turnera peruviana Willd.
  • Turnera sericea Kunth
  • Turnera trioniflora Sims
  • Turnera ulmifolia var. elegans (Otto) Urb.

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.