Lythrum salicariaL.

purple loosestrife

WFO wfo-0000366878 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Lythrum salicaria, photographed by goldfjnch
fig. a goldfjnch, CC0 1.0 / 2022-06-13 / obs. 205826227
Lythrum salicaria, photographed by Wolfgang Jauch
fig. b Wolfgang Jauch, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205541018
Lythrum salicaria, photographed by ll r Ирина
fig. c ll r Ирина, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205743473
Lythrum salicaria, photographed by bogsuckers
fig. d bogsuckers, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205188409
Lythrum salicaria, photographed by Josep Gesti
fig. e Josep Gesti, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 203522404
Lythrum salicaria, photographed by Andrew Skotnicki
fig. f Andrew Skotnicki, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 206009946
Lythrum salicaria, photographed by Pete Bradshaw
fig. g Pete Bradshaw, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204965653
Lythrum salicaria, photographed by David Lazarus
fig. h David Lazarus, CC0 1.0 / obs. 204477048

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 = 13,173 observations

Peak flowering in Aug, from 13,173 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 62 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.

  • Chabraea vulgaris Bubani
  • Lythron salicarium St.-Lag.
  • Lythrum alternifolium Lorey
  • Lythrum altissimum Pomel
  • Lythrum anceps (Koehne) Makino
  • Lythrum argyi H.Lév.
  • Lythrum cashmerianum Royle
  • Lythrum cinereum Griseb.
  • Lythrum coronense Schur
  • Lythrum diffusum Sweet
  • Lythrum dubium Schult.
  • Lythrum gracile (DC.) DC. ex Lafont
  • Lythrum hexagonum Bercht. ex Opiz
  • Lythrum nummulariifolium Pers.
  • Lythrum palustre Salisb.
  • Lythrum propinquum Weinm.
  • Lythrum pubescens Sweet
  • Lythrum purshianum Steud.
  • Lythrum quadrifolium Mart.
  • Lythrum salicaria f. alata Rivas Mateos
  • Lythrum salicaria f. albiflora Y.N.Lee
  • Lythrum salicaria f. angustius Koehne
  • Lythrum salicaria f. brevistyla Willk. & Lange
  • Lythrum salicaria f. caudatum (Koehne) Kitag.

and 38 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.