Achillea ptarmicaL.

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WFO wfo-0000033807 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Achillea ptarmica, photographed by R Clarke
fig. a R Clarke, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-10-17 / obs. 166001680

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.

Native range 32 botanical countries

Regions where Achillea ptarmica is native: Japan, Kamchatka, Kuril Is., Sakhalin, Austria, Baltic States, Belarus, Belgium, Central European Russia, Czechia-Slovakia, Denmark, East European Russia, Finland, Føroyar, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, North European Russia, Northwest European Russia, Norway, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Romania, South European Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine JapanKamchatkaSakhalinAustriaBaltic StatesBelarusBelgiumCentral European RussiaCzechia-SlovakiaDenmarkEast European RussiaFinlandFranceGermanyHungaryIrelandItalyNetherlandsNorth European RussiaNorthwest European RussiaNorwayNW. Balkan Pen.PolandRomaniaSouth European RussiaSpainSwedenSwitzerlandUkraine Føroyar
Native distribution of Achillea ptarmica, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Austria AUT EUROPE
Baltic States BLT
Belarus BLR
Belgium BGM
Central European Russia RUC
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
Denmark DEN
East European Russia RUE
Finland FIN
Føroyar FOR
France FRA
Germany GER
Great Britain GRB
Hungary HUN
Ireland IRE
Italy ITA
Netherlands NET
North European Russia RUN
Northwest European Russia RUW
Norway NOR
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Romania ROM
South European Russia RUS
Spain SPA
Sweden SWE
Switzerland SWI
Ukraine UKR
Japan JAP ASIA-TEMPERATE
Kamchatka KAM
Kuril Is. KUR
Sakhalin SAK

Not drawn on the map: Kuril Is., Great Britain. We hold no public-domain boundary for these regions, so they are listed rather than guessed at.

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 683 in flower of 702 examined

Proportion of examined Achillea ptarmica in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 0 0 too few examined
Feb 0 0 too few examined
Mar 1 1 too few examined
Apr 0 2 too few examined
May 0 1 too few examined
Jun 25 34 74% 57% to 85%
Jul 293 295 99% 98% to 100%
Aug 256 259 99% 97% to 100%
Sep 89 89 100% 96% to 100%
Oct 13 15 87% 62% to 96%
Nov 6 6 100% 61% to 100%
Dec 0 0 too few examined

Peak flowering in Sep. Each bar is the share of Achillea ptarmica observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 683 of 702 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 6 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Where it actually grows measured, from 1,910 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -12.8 °C -2.8 °C 2.8 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 15.9 °C 20.4 °C 24.1 °C
Annual rainfall 637 mm 827 mm 1,736 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 100 mm 159 mm 301 mm

It is found where winters bring hard frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,910 research-grade observations of Achillea ptarmica that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 21 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.

  • Achillea acuminata Freyn
  • Achillea dracunculoides Desf.
  • Achillea fragilis Balb. ex DC.
  • Achillea grandis Fisch. ex Herd
  • Achillea ircutiana Sch.Bip.
  • Achillea lenensis Turcz. ex DC.
  • Achillea leucanthema Pers.
  • Achillea linearis Steud.
  • Achillea maxima Fischer ex Heimerl
  • Achillea multiplex P.Renault
  • Achillea partheniflora Fisch. ex Herder
  • Achillea ptarmica f. ptarmica
  • Achillea ptarmica var. ptarmica
  • Achillea ptarmica var. vulgaris Heimerl
  • Achillea serrulata Hornem.
  • Achillea sylvestris Gray
  • Alitubus pyrenaicus Dulac
  • Chamaemelum ptarmica E.H.L.Krause
  • Chrysanthemum ptarmicifolium Puschk. ex Willd.
  • Ptarmica vulgaris Hill
  • Ptarmica vulgaris DC.

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.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

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