Centaurea stoebeL.

spotted knapweed

WFO wfo-0000044770 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Centaurea stoebe, photographed by Nico
fig. a Nico, CC0 1.0 / 2022-06-12 / obs. 205509768
Centaurea stoebe, photographed by Pavel Kacl
fig. b Pavel Kacl, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203596634
Centaurea stoebe, photographed by Andrew Tree
fig. c Andrew Tree, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202442041
Centaurea stoebe, photographed by Nash Turley
fig. d Nash Turley, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202489271
Centaurea stoebe, photographed by Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas
fig. e Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203240910
Centaurea stoebe, photographed by Andrew Tree
fig. f Andrew Tree, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201912499
Centaurea stoebe, photographed by Liam Steele
fig. g Liam Steele, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 198847230
Centaurea stoebe, photographed by Erwin Gruber
fig. h Erwin Gruber, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200800019

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.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 4,384 observations

Peak flowering in Jul, from 4,384 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 60 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.

  • Acosta biebersteinii (DC.) Dostál
  • Acosta chaubardii (Rchb.f.) Holub
  • Acosta maculosa (Lam.) Holub
  • Acosta micranthos (S.G.Gmel.) Soják
  • Acosta muretii (Jord.) Holub
  • Acosta radoslavoffii (Urum.) Holub
  • Acosta rhenana (Boreau) Soják
  • Acosta stoebe (L.) Soják
  • Acosta subalbida (Jord.) Holub
  • Acosta tartarea (Velen.) Holub
  • Acrolophus biebersteinii (DC.) Á.Löve & D.Löve
  • Acrolophus maculosus (Lam.) Cass.
  • Acrolophus rhenanus (Boreau ex Nyman) Á.Löve & D.Löve
  • Acrolophus subalbidus (Jord.) Fourr.
  • Acrolophus tenuisectus (Jord.) Fourr.
  • Centaurea affinis subsp. serbica Prodan
  • Centaurea affinis subsp. tartarea (Velen.) T.Georgiadis
  • Centaurea australis Pančić
  • Centaurea australis Pančić ex A.Kern.
  • Centaurea biebersteinii DC.
  • Centaurea biebersteinii subsp. australis (Pančić) Dostál
  • Centaurea biebersteinii subsp. biebersteinii
  • Centaurea biebersteinii subsp. radoslavoffii (Urum.) Dostál
  • Centaurea biebersteinii subsp. rhodopaea (Hayek & H.Wagner) Dostál

and 36 more.

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.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.