Acanthus mollisL.

Bear's breeches

WFO wfo-0000513864 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Acanthus mollis, photographed by luluchouette
fig. a luluchouette, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-27 / obs. 204340632
Acanthus mollis, photographed by Andrew Skotnicki
fig. b Andrew Skotnicki, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199267376
Acanthus mollis, photographed by luluchouette
fig. c luluchouette, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203804415
Acanthus mollis, photographed by Jon Sullivan
fig. d Jon Sullivan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195884485
Acanthus mollis, photographed by Jon Sullivan
fig. e Jon Sullivan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195823406
Acanthus mollis, photographed by Jon Sullivan
fig. f Jon Sullivan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195877530
Acanthus mollis, photographed by Tony Wills
fig. g Tony Wills, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 194663288
Acanthus mollis, photographed by Jon Sullivan
fig. h Jon Sullivan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195898140

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Flowering n = 1,300 observations

Peak flowering in May, from 1,300 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 10 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Acanthus hispanicus G.Don
  • Acanthus latifolius E.Goeze
  • Acanthus longifolius Poir.
  • Acanthus lusitanicus André
  • Acanthus mollis var. niger (Mill.) Willd.
  • Acanthus mollis var. nigra (Mill.) Willd.
  • Acanthus mollis var. viciosoi Pau
  • Acanthus niger Mill.
  • Acanthus platyphyllus Murb.
  • Acanthus spinosissimus Host

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.