Alyssum alyssoidesL.

Pale Madwortpale alyssumpale madwortsmall alisonyellow alyssum

WFO wfo-0000529216 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Alyssum alyssoides, photographed by Josep Gesti
fig. a Josep Gesti, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-05-01 / obs. 192952756

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 40 botanical countries

Regions where Alyssum alyssoides is native: Morocco, Afghanistan, Cyprus, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kirgizstan, Lebanon-Syria, North Caucasus, Tadzhikistan, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Albania, Austria, Baltic States, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Central European Russia, Corse, Czechia-Slovakia, East European Russia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Krym, Netherlands, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sardegna, South European Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Türkiye-in-Europe, Ukraine MoroccoAfghanistanCyprusIranKazakhstanKirgizstanLebanon-SyriaNorth CaucasusTadzhikistanTranscaucasusTürkiyeTurkmenistanUzbekistanAlbaniaAustriaBaltic StatesBelarusBelgiumBulgariaCentral European RussiaCorseCzechia-SlovakiaEast European RussiaFranceGermanyGreeceHungaryItalyKrymNetherlandsNW. Balkan Pen.PolandPortugalRomaniaSouth European RussiaSpainSwitzerlandTürkiye-in-EuropeUkraine Sardegna
Native distribution of Alyssum alyssoides, 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
Albania ALB EUROPE
Austria AUT
Baltic States BLT
Belarus BLR
Belgium BGM
Bulgaria BUL
Central European Russia RUC
Corse COR
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
East European Russia RUE
France FRA
Germany GER
Greece GRC
Hungary HUN
Italy ITA
Krym KRY
Netherlands NET
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Portugal POR
Romania ROM
Sardegna SAR
South European Russia RUS
Spain SPA
Switzerland SWI
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
Ukraine UKR
Afghanistan AFG ASIA-TEMPERATE
Cyprus CYP
Iran IRN
Kazakhstan KAZ
Kirgizstan KGZ
Lebanon-Syria LBS
North Caucasus NCS
Tadzhikistan TZK
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR
Turkmenistan TKM
Uzbekistan UZB
Morocco MOR AFRICA

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 296 in flower of 410 examined

Proportion of examined Alyssum alyssoides in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 1 1 too few examined
Feb 1 2 too few examined
Mar 29 34 85% 70% to 94%
Apr 99 117 85% 77% to 90%
May 118 158 75% 67% to 81%
Jun 42 84 50% 40% to 60%
Jul 2 8 25% 7% to 59%
Aug 0 1 too few examined
Sep 0 0 too few examined
Oct 1 2 too few examined
Nov 1 1 too few examined
Dec 2 2 too few examined

Peak flowering in Mar. Each bar is the share of Alyssum alyssoides 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. 296 of 410 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 2,037 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -11.5 °C -3.8 °C 2.3 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 20.6 °C 25.3 °C 29.6 °C
Annual rainfall 417 mm 716 mm 1,255 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 58 mm 118 mm 226 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 2,037 research-grade observations of Alyssum alyssoides 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 43 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.

  • Adyseton alyssoides Nieuwl.
  • Adyseton calycinum Scop.
  • Adyseton campestre (L.) Moench
  • Adyseton mutabile Moench
  • Alyssum alsinifolium Host
  • Alyssum alyssoides f. albineum Farw.
  • Alyssum alyssoides subsp. hispanicum (T.R.Dudley) Rivas Mart. & Sánchez Mata
  • Alyssum alyssoides var. alyssoides L.
  • Alyssum alyssoides var. depressum T.R.Dudley
  • Alyssum alyssoides var. hispanicum T.R.Dudley
  • Alyssum arvaticum Jord.
  • Alyssum calicinum Neck.
  • Alyssum calycinum L.
  • Alyssum calycinum Haens. ex Nyman
  • Alyssum campestre (L.) L.
  • Alyssum campestre Hoffm.
  • Alyssum campestre subsp. campestre (L.) L.
  • Alyssum conglobatum Filarszky & Javorka
  • Alyssum erraticum Jord.
  • Alyssum fontqueri Sennen
  • Alyssum lusitanicum Brot. ex Nyman
  • Alyssum luteolum var. pumilum Pomel
  • Alyssum micropetalum Kit.
  • Alyssum montanum Brot.

and 19 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.