From 79b26d144c0c1ff99c75bef8ef41c6a49eb58155 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: MarcoGorelli <>
Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2022 12:03:04 +0100
Subject: [PATCH 1/3] use pd.Timestamp for single element

---
 pandas/plotting/_matplotlib/converter.py | 2 +-
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/pandas/plotting/_matplotlib/converter.py b/pandas/plotting/_matplotlib/converter.py
index 6eb77b63f5356..0adfde982e5c2 100644
--- a/pandas/plotting/_matplotlib/converter.py
+++ b/pandas/plotting/_matplotlib/converter.py
@@ -152,7 +152,7 @@ def _to_ordinalf(tm: pydt.time) -> float:
 
 def time2num(d):
     if isinstance(d, str):
-        parsed = tools.to_datetime(d)
+        parsed = Timestamp(d)
         if not isinstance(parsed, datetime):
             raise ValueError(f"Could not parse time {d}")
         return _to_ordinalf(parsed.time())

From bf919fe3ea044d123c0db4a5da572c5ee6187bde Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: MarcoGorelli <>
Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2022 14:35:46 +0100
Subject: [PATCH 2/3] :pencil: add whatsnew entry

---
 doc/source/whatsnew/v2.0.0.rst | 2 +-
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/doc/source/whatsnew/v2.0.0.rst b/doc/source/whatsnew/v2.0.0.rst
index fea3d70d81554..cbc493e1e556d 100644
--- a/doc/source/whatsnew/v2.0.0.rst
+++ b/doc/source/whatsnew/v2.0.0.rst
@@ -253,7 +253,7 @@ Period
 
 Plotting
 ^^^^^^^^
--
+- ``ax.set_xlim`` was sometimes raising ``UserWarning`` which users couldn't address due to ``set_xlim`` not accepting parsing arguments - the converter now uses :func:`Timestamp` instead (:issue:`49148`)
 -
 
 Groupby/resample/rolling

From add99fd5f8463fc3e9153b7e79d258fdbf397440 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: MarcoGorelli <>
Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2022 15:37:59 +0100
Subject: [PATCH 3/3] remove unreachable line

---
 pandas/plotting/_matplotlib/converter.py | 2 --
 1 file changed, 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/pandas/plotting/_matplotlib/converter.py b/pandas/plotting/_matplotlib/converter.py
index 0adfde982e5c2..70fca27c837f3 100644
--- a/pandas/plotting/_matplotlib/converter.py
+++ b/pandas/plotting/_matplotlib/converter.py
@@ -153,8 +153,6 @@ def _to_ordinalf(tm: pydt.time) -> float:
 def time2num(d):
     if isinstance(d, str):
         parsed = Timestamp(d)
-        if not isinstance(parsed, datetime):
-            raise ValueError(f"Could not parse time {d}")
         return _to_ordinalf(parsed.time())
     if isinstance(d, pydt.time):
         return _to_ordinalf(d)