PlantKey Open ecological atlas
Planner
Home / Browse / Spermacoce / Oval-leaf False Buttonweed
iNaturalist — CC, credited & licensed per image
Rubiaceae family

Oval-leaf False Buttonweed Spermacoce latifolia

Oval-leaf False Buttonweed is an introduced perennial herb, found in Hawaii and the Pacific Basin.

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
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
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 ~1 caterpillar species

Spermacoce supports ~1 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 modest genus.

Recorded feeding on Spermacoce in North America, including:

Herpetogramma bipunctalis · Two-Spotted Herpetogramma Malacosoma californica · Western Tent Caterpillar Syngamia florella · Red-Waisted Florella Moth Xylophanes tersa · Tersa 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 1 bee visitor

1 native & managed bee species is documented visiting Oval-leaf False Buttonweed :

Apis mellifera · Honey Bee
Visitor records (observations, not exhaustive) from Noori et al. 2026 (CC BY 4.0) · GloBI →
Wildlife & visitors 1 mammal

Open records of who else uses Oval-leaf False Buttonweed — a generalist food-web signal, kept separate from the keystone Ecological Value.

Recorded eaten by 1 mammal species (fruit, seed, browse):

Tapirus terrestris · Lowland Tapir
Interaction records (observations, not exhaustive) from GloBI → (CC0). Counts are distinct species; names are the most-recorded. Common names from Wikidata (CC0).
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] Ecological value — Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[08] Wildlife & visitors — GloBI — Global Biotic Interactions (CC0)
[11] Flower-visitor value (derived) — Noori et al. 2026 (CC BY 4.0) · GloBI
[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…