Utricularia radiataSmall

little floating bladderwort

WFO wfo-0001072710 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Utricularia radiata, photographed by Abby Darrah
fig. a Abby Darrah, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-04-17 / obs. 188876786
Utricularia radiata, photographed by Brady Reed
fig. b Brady Reed, CC0 1.0 / obs. 170871004
Utricularia radiata, photographed by evangrimes
fig. c evangrimes, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 135549602
Utricularia radiata, photographed by Lauren McLaurin
fig. d Lauren McLaurin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 119655417
Utricularia radiata, photographed by Dan Johnson
fig. e Dan Johnson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 101557012
Utricularia radiata, photographed by Dan Johnson
fig. f Dan Johnson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 101557099
Utricularia radiata, photographed by Dan Johnson
fig. g Dan Johnson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 101556992
Utricularia radiata, photographed by er-birds
fig. h er-birds, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 91645084

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 28 botanical countries

Regions where Utricularia radiata is native: Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mexico Southeast, Michigan, Mississippi, New Brunswick, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Nova Scotia, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode I., South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia AlabamaArkansasConnecticutFloridaGeorgiaIndianaLouisianaMaineMarylandMassachusettsMexico SoutheastMichiganMississippiNew BrunswickNew HampshireNew JerseyNew YorkNorth CarolinaNova ScotiaOklahomaPennsylvaniaSouth CarolinaTennesseeTexasVermontVirginia DelawareRhode I.
Native distribution of Utricularia radiata, 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
Alabama ALA NORTHERN AMERICA
Arkansas ARK
Connecticut CNT
Delaware DEL
Florida FLA
Georgia GEO
Indiana INI
Louisiana LOU
Maine MAI
Maryland MRY
Massachusetts MAS
Mexico Southeast MXT
Michigan MIC
Mississippi MSI
New Brunswick NBR
New Hampshire NWH
New Jersey NWJ
New York NWY
North Carolina NCA
Nova Scotia NSC
Oklahoma OKL
Pennsylvania PEN
Rhode I. RHO
South Carolina SCA
Tennessee TEN
Texas TEX
Vermont VER
Virginia VRG

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 200 in flower of 211 examined

Peak flowering in Mar. Each bar is the share of Utricularia radiata 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. 200 of 211 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 3 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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 912 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -14.0 °C -7.1 °C 14.0 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 21.2 °C 26.8 °C 33.6 °C
Annual rainfall 1,105 mm 1,352 mm 1,682 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 170 mm 270 mm 347 mm

It is found where winters bring hard frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 912 research-grade observations of Utricularia radiata 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 2 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.

  • Utricularia inflata var. minor Chapm.
  • Utricularia inflata var. radiata (Small) W.Stone

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.