This toxic woodland wildflower is blooming everywhere right now
iNaturalist Community
Native Plants
If you've got shady patches at the edge of your yard or a nearby woodland trail, those clusters of white, fuzzy-looking flowers blooming right now are worth a second look, and worth keeping grazing pets away from.
White snakeroot is a common woodland wildflower in the eastern US that blooms in fall with little white flower clusters. Right now it's one of the most-photographed plants on iNaturalist, with over a thousand people logging sightings in a single week. It's also the plant responsible for historic outbreaks of 'milk sickness' when livestock ate it and people drank the contaminated milk, so it's a cool one to be able to identify.
Key Findings
1,063 observations of white snakeroot were logged in the US over the past 7 days, among the highest counts for any plant species on the platform.
That's a decrease of 343 observations from the prior week, when 1,406 were recorded.
The spike reflects the species' fall bloom period, which drives a surge of citizen-science sightings across its eastern North American range.
chevron_right Technical Summary
A toxic native wildflower called white snakeroot is showing up a lot on iNaturalist right now, with over 1,000 US sightings logged in the past week, though that's down from the week before.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Trending: white snakeroot (Ageratina altissima) — 1063 observations this week
White snakeroot (Ageratina altissima) is a species in the family Asteraceae. iNaturalist users recorded 1063 observations of it in the United States in the 7 days before today, among the most for a...
open_in_new Read full abstractAbstract copyright held by the original publisher.
Species Mentioned
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Photo by Ira Gershenhorn, taken in New York, United States. CC0 via iNaturalist.
Phenology is the study of recurring biological events in plant life cycles—such as flowering, fruiting, and germination—and how these events are timed in response to seasonal and climatic conditions. This research is essential to plant science because phenological patterns directly influence
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