PlantKey Open ecological atlas
Planner
Home / Browse / Erigeron / Supple Fleabane
Wikimedia Commons — CC, credited & licensed per image
Asteraceae family

Supple Fleabane Erigeron supplex

Native Specialist-bee host

Supple Fleabane is a perennial wildflower native to the lower 48 states. It blooms May – Jul. A host for pollen-specialist native bees.

More about this plant

Erigeron supplex is a rare species of flowering plant in the family Asteraceae known by the common names supple daisy or supple fleabane. It grows along the coastline and in the Coast Ranges in California, north of San Francisco Bay. It probably remains only in Sonoma and Marin Counties. There is a report of it growing well inland in Shasta County, but this is from a farm and probably a cultivated specimen. Wikipedia →

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
Conditions
Sources · Conditions
Cold hardiness (derived) — Hardiness
Hardiness
≥ zone 11 derived from its U.S. range
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
Lifespan
Perennial
In the garden
Herb layer — Sits in the herb of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →
derived roles
The garden year bloom → fruit → fall colour
J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Bloom
Bloom (the flower's colour)
Bloom · May – Jul — 13 obs · Herbarium specimens — Park et al. 2023 (CC BY 4.0)
Species characteristics from USDA PLANTS (public domain) + TRY (CC BY) — general guidance, not a guarantee for your exact site. Deer "browsing" is documented palatability, not a deer-proof claim.

Wildlife & pollinators

How pollinator value is scored →
❧ Caterpillar hosts ~15 caterpillar species

Erigeron supports ~15 caterpillar species.

Native butterfly & moth caterpillars are the base of the terrestrial food web — most songbirds rear their young almost entirely on them. As a host for native Lepidoptera this is a moderate genus.

Recorded feeding on Erigeron in North America, including:

Agonopterix arnicella · concealer moth Archips purpurana · leafroller moth Argyrotaenia franciscana · Orange Tortrix Bucculatrix angustata · ribbed cocoon-maker moth Caloreas augustella Charidryas damoetas · brush-footed butterfly
+ 8 more species →
Charidryas palla · brush-footed butterfly Cucullia florea · Gray Hooded-Owlet Cucullia lilacina · owlet moth Cucullia speyeri · owlet moth Dichomeris stipendiaria · twirler moth Grammia williamsii · Williams' Tiger Moth Herpetogramma pertextalis · Bold-Feathered Grass Moth Hyles lineata · White-Lined Sphinx
Keystone count (genus-level) from Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use records. Named species (a documented Nearctic sample, not exhaustive) from NHM HOSTS (CC0).
✦ Bees specialist-bee host

Specialist native bees depend on it.

Some native bees are pollen specialists (oligolectic) — they raise young only on pollen from particular plant genera. Erigeron is a recorded specialist-bee host, so losing it can mean losing the bee that relies on it.

Xerces pollinator conservation →
Specialist hosts from Smith et al. 2024.
Species thumbnails re-hosted from iNaturalist — Creative Commons, credited per image (hover for credit). Click any species to see it on iNaturalist. Not exhaustive; many taxa have no openly-licensed photo yet.
Sources for this entry (14) Open & cited
[01] Scientific name & family — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[02] Growth habit & duration — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[03] Native status & distribution — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[04] Common name — USDA PLANTS (via GBIF)
[05] Invasive / introduced status — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — native status
[07] Description — Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
[08] Ecological value — Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts · Smith et al. 2024 (CC BY)
[10] Conservation rank — NatureServe Explorer (CC BY)
[11] Cold hardiness (derived) — Derived from U.S. range × USDA PHZM zones
[12] Caterpillar host count — Warren II 2026 (Dryad, CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[13] Caterpillar species — NHM HOSTS (CC0)
[14] County range — GBIF Open Data — open-licensed occurrences (CC0/CC-BY) → county
Spot an error or have a better photo? Every field links to its source, and the whole dataset is open.
Cite this page Open data, please attribute

PlantKey’s data is open under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to reuse and adapt, with attribution and the same licence. Photos keep their own per-image licence + credit (see Sources above).

Citation

Loading…

BibTeX 
Loading…