Silene laciniataCav.

cardinal catchfly

WFO wfo-0001291532 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Silene laciniata, photographed by Henrik Kibak
fig. a Henrik Kibak, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-06 / obs. 205365653
Silene laciniata, photographed by Diego Maldonado de la Torre
fig. b Diego Maldonado de la Torre, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205630591
Silene laciniata, photographed by John Hibbard
fig. c John Hibbard, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204752038
Silene laciniata, photographed by Madeleine Claire
fig. d Madeleine Claire, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202482000
Silene laciniata, photographed by Alex
fig. e Alex, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205343621
Silene laciniata, photographed by Alex
fig. f Alex, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201561021
Silene laciniata, photographed by Alexander Wentworth
fig. g Alexander Wentworth, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203103877
Silene laciniata, photographed by Drew Meyer
fig. h Drew Meyer, CC0 1.0 / obs. 202112006

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 = 1,616 observations

Peak flowering in Jun, from 1,616 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 17 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.

  • Lychnis pulchra Willd. ex Schltdl. & Cham.
  • Melandrium californicum (Durand) Rohrb.
  • Melandrium laciniatum (Cav.) Rohrb.
  • Melandrium laciniatum var. greggii (A.Gray) Rohrb.
  • Silene allamannii Otth
  • Silene californica Durand
  • Silene greggii A.Gray
  • Silene laciniata subsp. brandegeei C.L.Hitchc. & Maguire
  • Silene laciniata subsp. laciniata
  • Silene laciniata subsp. major C.L.Hitchc. & Maguire
  • Silene laciniata var. angustifolia C.L.Hitchc. & Maguire
  • Silene laciniata var. californica (Durand) A.Gray
  • Silene laciniata var. greggii (A.Gray) S.Watson
  • Silene laciniata var. laciniata
  • Silene laciniata var. latifolia C.L.Hitchc. & Maguire
  • Silene pulchra Torr. & A.Gray
  • Silene simulans Greene

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.