Show only certain items in legend Python Matplotlib

This works:

plt.plot(x, y, label='_nolegend_')

source

I often insert an empty label for legends I don't want to show. I made an extremely simple example which I hope will help you. You will need to tweak this to your own data but the elements you need should be there.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt 
import numpy as np

myY=np.random.randint(20, size=10)
myX=np.arange(0,len(myY))

selected=[5,10,15]

fig = plt.figure()
for X,Y in zip(myX,myY):
    if Y in selected:
        mylabel="label = %s"%(Y); mycolor='blue'
    else:
        mylabel=None; mycolor='red'
    plt.scatter(X,Y,50, color=mycolor, label=mylabel)
plt.legend()
plt.show()

This creates the following plot:

For whatever reason both answers didn't work for mine situation. What worked, and actually was indicated above:

legend also takes a list of artists and a list of labels to precisely control what goes into your legend – tacaswell Jul 11 '14 at 4:46

import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import pylab

pd.Series(range(10)).plot(color = 'grey')
x = list(range(10))
y = [i + 1 for i in x]  
scat1 = plt.scatter(x, y)

pylab.legend([scat1],['moved points'], loc = 'upper left')

plt.show()

The result of the code:

You can also use an empty string variable:

    plt.plot(xData, yData, ..., label=str())

By passing an empty str() object, it doesn't write down anything.

Matplotlib API reference