Anchusa officinalisL.

alkanetcommon bugloss

WFO wfo-0000533707 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Anchusa officinalis, photographed by Andrea Meucci
fig. a Andrea Meucci, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-06-13 / obs. 205745450
Anchusa officinalis, photographed by machaut2
fig. b machaut2, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205054859
Anchusa officinalis, photographed by Donald Davesne
fig. c Donald Davesne, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204245677
Anchusa officinalis, photographed by Dr. Sven Gippner
fig. d Dr. Sven Gippner, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203302439
Anchusa officinalis, photographed by Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas
fig. e Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203126403
Anchusa officinalis, photographed by aga_l_
fig. f aga_l_, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202731486
Anchusa officinalis, photographed by Zoltán Stekkelpak
fig. g Zoltán Stekkelpak, CC0 1.0 / obs. 201877725
Anchusa officinalis, photographed by Liubov Ilminska
fig. h Liubov Ilminska, CC0 1.0 / obs. 201694431

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
01190688
Filed as
Anchusa officinalis L.
Det. by
J. C. Ayres
Collected
J. H. Christ 1934-05-24
Origin
US
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 30 botanical countries

Regions where Anchusa officinalis is native: Kazakhstan, North Caucasus, Türkiye, Albania, Austria, Baleares, Baltic States, Belarus, Bulgaria, Central European Russia, Corse, Denmark, East European Russia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, North European Russia, Northwest European Russia, Norway, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Romania, South European Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, Türkiye-in-Europe, Ukraine KazakhstanNorth CaucasusTürkiyeAlbaniaAustriaBaltic StatesBelarusBulgariaCentral European RussiaCorseDenmarkEast European RussiaFranceGermanyGreeceHungaryItalyNetherlandsNorth European RussiaNorthwest European RussiaNorwayNW. Balkan Pen.PolandRomaniaSouth European RussiaSwedenSwitzerlandTürkiye-in-EuropeUkraine Baleares
Native distribution of Anchusa officinalis, 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
Baleares BAL
Baltic States BLT
Belarus BLR
Bulgaria BUL
Central European Russia RUC
Corse COR
Denmark DEN
East European Russia RUE
France FRA
Germany GER
Greece GRC
Hungary HUN
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
Sweden SWE
Switzerland SWI
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
Ukraine UKR
Kazakhstan KAZ ASIA-TEMPERATE
North Caucasus NCS
Türkiye TUR

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 1,288 in flower of 1,302 examined

Peak flowering in Jul. Each bar is the share of Anchusa officinalis 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. 1,288 of 1,302 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 3 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.

When it blooms, where you are 1 state

StatePeaksObservations in flower
Washington May 91

Where it actually grows measured, from 1,952 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -8.1 °C -3.5 °C 0.6 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 18.9 °C 23.4 °C 28.7 °C
Annual rainfall 503 mm 634 mm 947 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 72 mm 111 mm 168 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 1,952 research-grade observations of Anchusa officinalis 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 30 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.

  • Anchusa angustifolia L.
  • Anchusa angustifolia DC.
  • Anchusa arvalis Rchb.
  • Anchusa baumgartenii Nyman
  • Anchusa davidovii Stoj.
  • Anchusa incarnata Schrad. ex Steud.
  • Anchusa leptophylla W.D.J.Koch
  • Anchusa lycopsidis Besser ex Link
  • Anchusa macedonica Velen.
  • Anchusa macrocalyx Hausskn.
  • Anchusa maculata Hornem. ex Steud.
  • Anchusa microcalyx Vis.
  • Anchusa moesiaca Velen.
  • Anchusa ochroleuca Baumg.
  • Anchusa ochroleuca subsp. procera (Besser ex Link) Nyman
  • Anchusa officinalis var. brachyantha Regel
  • Anchusa officinalis var. longiflora Griseb.
  • Anchusa officinalis var. moesiaca (Velen.) Gușul.
  • Anchusa officinalis var. ochroleuca Boiss.
  • Anchusa officinalis var. velenovskyi Gușul.
  • Anchusa osmanica Velen.
  • Anchusa pustulata Schur
  • Anchusa spicata Lam.
  • Anchusa tinctoria Woodv.

and 6 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.