Is it possible to add a string as a legend item in matplotlib

Alternative solution, kind of dirty but pretty quick.

import pylab as pltX = range(50)Y = range(50)plt.plot(X, Y, label="Very straight line")# Create empty plot with blank marker containing the extra labelplt.plot([], [], ' ', label="Extra label on the legend")plt.legend()plt.show()

Sure. ax.legend() has a two argument form that accepts a list of objects (handles) and a list of strings (labels). Use a dummy object (aka a "proxy artist") for your extra string. I picked a matplotlib.patches.Rectangle with no fill and 0 linewdith below, but you could use any supported artist.

For example, let's say you have 4 bar objects (since you didn't post the code used to generate the graph, I can't reproduce it exactly).

import matplotlib.pyplot as pltfrom matplotlib.patches import Rectanglefig = plt.figure()ax = fig.add_subplot(111)bar_0_10 = ax.bar(np.arange(0,10), np.arange(1,11), color="k")bar_10_100 = ax.bar(np.arange(0,10), np.arange(30,40), bottom=np.arange(1,11), color="g")# create blank rectangleextra = Rectangle((0, 0), 1, 1, fc="w", fill=False, edgecolor='none', linewidth=0)ax.legend([extra, bar_0_10, bar_10_100], ("My explanatory text", "0-10", "10-100"))plt.show()