Aethusa cynapiumL.

fool's parsleyfools parsley

WFO wfo-0000522564 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Aethusa cynapium, photographed by Yann Kemper
fig. a Yann Kemper, CC0 1.0 / 2022-06-05 / obs. 203617254
Aethusa cynapium, photographed by Susan Marley
fig. b Susan Marley, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 178823389
Aethusa cynapium, photographed by Tim Johnson
fig. c Tim Johnson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 175900778
Aethusa cynapium, photographed by Daniel Cahen
fig. d Daniel Cahen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 153636079
Aethusa cynapium, photographed by Radosław Puchałka
fig. e Radosław Puchałka, CC0 1.0 / obs. 149282391
Aethusa cynapium, photographed by Robert H. Wardell
fig. f Robert H. Wardell, CC0 1.0 / obs. 147280117
Aethusa cynapium, photographed by Pavel Kacl
fig. g Pavel Kacl, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 146566938
Aethusa cynapium, photographed by SK53
fig. h SK53, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 143599315

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.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
02236199
Filed as
Aethusa cynapium L.
Det. by
T. Gviniashvili 2004-01-01
Collected
T. Gviniashvili 2004-08-30
Origin
GE
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 32 botanical countries

Regions where Aethusa cynapium is native: North Caucasus, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, Austria, Baltic States, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Central European Russia, Corse, Czechia-Slovakia, Denmark, East European Russia, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, Krym, Netherlands, North European Russia, Northwest European Russia, Norway, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Romania, South European Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine North CaucasusTranscaucasusTürkiyeAustriaBaltic StatesBelarusBelgiumBulgariaCentral European RussiaCorseCzechia-SlovakiaDenmarkEast European RussiaFinlandFranceGermanyHungaryItalyKrymNetherlandsNorth European RussiaNorthwest European RussiaNorwayNW. Balkan Pen.PolandRomaniaSouth European RussiaSpainSwedenSwitzerlandUkraine
Native distribution of Aethusa cynapium, 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.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Austria AUT EUROPE
Baltic States BLT
Belarus BLR
Belgium BGM
Bulgaria BUL
Central European Russia RUC
Corse COR
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
Denmark DEN
East European Russia RUE
Finland FIN
France FRA
Germany GER
Great Britain GRB
Hungary HUN
Italy ITA
Krym KRY
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
North Caucasus NCS ASIA-TEMPERATE
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR

Not drawn on the map: Great Britain. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is 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 182 in flower of 220 examined

Peak flowering in Jul. Each bar is the share of Aethusa cynapium 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. 182 of 220 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 7 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 1,706 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -10.9 °C -2.9 °C 3.0 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 18.4 °C 22.4 °C 27.0 °C
Annual rainfall 576 mm 778 mm 1,368 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 95 mm 149 mm 268 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 1,706 research-grade observations of Aethusa cynapium 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 36 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.

  • Aethusa agrestis (Wallr.) Sloboda
  • Aethusa cicuta Neck.
  • Aethusa cynapioides M.Bieb.
  • Aethusa cynapium f. agrestis (Wallr.) Schube
  • Aethusa cynapium subsp. agrestis (Wallr.) Dostál
  • Aethusa cynapium subsp. cynapioides (M.Bieb.) Nyman
  • Aethusa cynapium subsp. gigantea (Lej.) P.D.Sell
  • Aethusa cynapium var. agrestis Wallr.
  • Aethusa cynapium var. campestris Godr.
  • Aethusa cynapium var. cynapioides (M.Bieb.) P.Fourn.
  • Aethusa cynapium var. domestica Wallr.
  • Aethusa cynapium var. elata (Hoffm.) Gaudin
  • Aethusa cynapium var. elatior Döll
  • Aethusa cynapium var. gigantea Lej.
  • Aethusa cynapium var. hortensis Boenn.
  • Aethusa cynapium var. macrocarpa Gaudin
  • Aethusa cynapium var. nemorum Lamotte
  • Aethusa cynapium var. pumila Roth
  • Aethusa cynapium var. pygmaea W.D.J.Koch
  • Aethusa cynapium var. segetalis (Boenn.) Rchb.
  • Aethusa cynapium var. segetalis (Boenn.) Beck
  • Aethusa cynapium var. sylvestris Godr.
  • Aethusa cynica Dulac
  • Aethusa elata Hoffm.

and 12 more.

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.