Alchemilla pectinataKunth

WFO wfo-0000986227 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Alchemilla pectinata, photographed by Lena Struwe
fig. a Lena Struwe, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2017-03-14 / obs. 6986625

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
Smithsonian, US National Herbarium
Accession
US 3223341
Filed as
Alchemilla pectinata Kunth
Det. by
Dorr, L. J., (BOT), Smithsonian Institution - National Museum of Natural History (UNITED STATES)
Collected
E. Asplund 1939-09-23
Origin
EC
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC0 1.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. We link to the digitised sheet rather than rehosting it, because the holding institutions do not serve their images to third parties reliably and we are not going to show you a picture we cannot actually deliver. 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 sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 9 botanical countries

Regions where Alchemilla pectinata is native: Mexico Central, Mexico Gulf, Mexico Northeast, Mexico Southeast, Mexico Southwest, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala Mexico CentralMexico GulfMexico NortheastMexico SoutheastMexico SouthwestBoliviaColombiaEcuadorGuatemala
Native distribution of Alchemilla pectinata, 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
Mexico Central MXC NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Gulf MXG
Mexico Northeast MXE
Mexico Southeast MXT
Mexico Southwest MXS
Bolivia BOL SOUTHERN AMERICA
Colombia CLM
Ecuador ECU
Guatemala GUA

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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 33 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 0.9 °C 3.9 °C 7.4 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 11.6 °C 20.3 °C 22.9 °C
Annual rainfall 1,101 mm 1,672 mm 5,247 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 50 mm 88 mm 471 mm

It is found where winters are cool but frost is light or absent. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 33 research-grade observations of Alchemilla pectinata 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.

Also published as 3 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.

  • Alchemilla pectinata var. mexicana L.M.Perry
  • Lachemilla pectinata (Kunth) Rothm.
  • Lachemilla pectinata subsp. caucana Rothm. ex Luteyn

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. 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.