Mirabilis laevis(Benth.) Curran

Wishbone Bush

WFO wfo-0001086764 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Mirabilis laevis, photographed by Amthinkia
fig. a Amthinkia, CC0 1.0 / 2022-05-27 / obs. 201124669
Mirabilis laevis, photographed by Millie Basden
fig. b Millie Basden, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 193383098
Mirabilis laevis, photographed by Trevor Van Loon
fig. c Trevor Van Loon, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202570407
Mirabilis laevis, photographed by Kimball Garrett
fig. d Kimball Garrett, CC0 1.0 / obs. 192320331
Mirabilis laevis, photographed by Alix Kosmala
fig. e Alix Kosmala, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 194803602
Mirabilis laevis, photographed by Bobby McCabe
fig. f Bobby McCabe, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 188367300
Mirabilis laevis, photographed by James Fowler
fig. g James Fowler, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 188017032
Mirabilis laevis, photographed by Dave West
fig. h Dave West, CC0 1.0 / obs. 187563327

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 = 2,373 observations

Peak flowering in Mar, from 2,373 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 27 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.

  • Hesperonia aspera (Greene) Standl.
  • Hesperonia bigelovii (A.Gray) Standl.
  • Hesperonia californica (A.Gray) Standl.
  • Hesperonia cedrosensis Standl.
  • Hesperonia glutinosa Standl.
  • Hesperonia glutinosa subsp. retrorsa (A.Heller) Standl.
  • Hesperonia heimerlii Standl.
  • Hesperonia laevis (Benth.) Standl.
  • Hesperonia limosa var. retrorsa (A.Heller) Standl.
  • Hesperonia retrorsa (A.Heller) Standl.
  • Mirabilis aspera Greene
  • Mirabilis bigelovii var. aspera (Greene) Munz
  • Mirabilis bigelovii var. retrorsa (A.Heller) Munz
  • Mirabilis californica subsp. aspera (Greene) Parish
  • Mirabilis californica var. aspera (Greene) Jeps.
  • Mirabilis californica var. retrorsa (A.Heller) Jeps.
  • Mirabilis californica var. villosa Kellogg
  • Mirabilis cedrosensis (Standl.) Jeps.
  • Mirabilis heimerlii (Standl.) J.F.Macbr.
  • Mirabilis laevis var. aspera (Greene) Jeps.
  • Mirabilis laevis var. cedrosensis (Standl.) Munz
  • Mirabilis laevis var. cordifolia Dunkle
  • Mirabilis laevis var. laevis
  • Mirabilis retrorsa A.Heller

and 3 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.