Anthriscus caucalisM.Bieb.

bur chervil

WFO wfo-0000538624 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Anthriscus caucalis, photographed by Erin Springinotic
fig. a Erin Springinotic, CC0 1.0 / 2022-06-05 / obs. 203972639

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
03366369
Filed as
Anthriscus caucalis M.Bieb.
Det. by
not recorded on this sheet
Collected
not recorded
Origin
not recorded
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. 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 35 botanical countries

Regions where Anthriscus caucalis is native: Algeria, Canary Is., Madeira, Morocco, Cyprus, Lebanon-Syria, North Caucasus, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, Albania, Austria, Baleares, Belgium, Bulgaria, Corse, Czechia-Slovakia, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Krym, Netherlands, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Türkiye-in-Europe, Ukraine AlgeriaMoroccoCyprusLebanon-SyriaNorth CaucasusTranscaucasusTürkiyeAlbaniaAustriaBelgiumBulgariaCorseCzechia-SlovakiaDenmarkFranceGermanyGreeceHungaryIrelandItalyKrymNetherlandsNW. Balkan Pen.PolandPortugalRomaniaSpainSwedenSwitzerlandTürkiye-in-EuropeUkraine Canary Is.MadeiraBaleares
Native distribution of Anthriscus caucalis, 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
Belgium BGM
Bulgaria BUL
Corse COR
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
Denmark DEN
France FRA
Germany GER
Great Britain GRB
Greece GRC
Hungary HUN
Ireland IRE
Italy ITA
Krym KRY
Netherlands NET
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Portugal POR
Romania ROM
Spain SPA
Sweden SWE
Switzerland SWI
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
Ukraine UKR
Cyprus CYP ASIA-TEMPERATE
Lebanon-Syria LBS
North Caucasus NCS
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Canary Is. CNY
Madeira MDR
Morocco MOR

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 539 in flower of 657 examined

Proportion of examined Anthriscus caucalis in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 0 5 0% 0% to 43%
Feb 2 5 40% 12% to 77%
Mar 26 57 46% 33% to 58%
Apr 243 276 88% 84% to 91%
May 207 233 89% 84% to 92%
Jun 21 31 68% 50% to 81%
Jul 1 2 too few examined
Aug 1 1 too few examined
Sep 4 5 80% 38% to 96%
Oct 18 19 95% 75% to 99%
Nov 12 14 86% 60% to 96%
Dec 4 9 44% 19% to 73%

Peak flowering in Oct. Each bar is the share of Anthriscus caucalis 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. 539 of 657 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 2 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 2,007 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -4.7 °C 2.8 °C 6.9 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 17.9 °C 24.7 °C 33.6 °C
Annual rainfall 379 mm 705 mm 1,397 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 5 mm 77 mm 175 mm

It is found where winters bring light 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 2,007 research-grade observations of Anthriscus caucalis 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 37 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.

  • Anthriscus anthriscus (L.) H.Karst.
  • Anthriscus caucalis var. gymnocarpa (Moris) Cannon
  • Anthriscus caucalis var. gymnocarpus (Moris) Soó
  • Anthriscus caucalis var. neglecta (Boiss. & Reut. ex Lange) P.Silva & Franco
  • Anthriscus hispanicus Rouy
  • Anthriscus neglecta Boiss. & Reut. ex Lange
  • Anthriscus neglectus var. scandix (Scop.) Hyl.
  • Anthriscus scandicinus (Weber) Mansf.
  • Anthriscus scandix (Scop.) Asch.
  • Anthriscus vulgaris Pers.
  • Anthriscus vulgaris f. longipedicellata H.Lindb.
  • Anthriscus vulgaris subsp. hispanica (Rouy) Rouy
  • Anthriscus vulgaris var. baetica Pau
  • Anthriscus vulgaris var. baeticum Pau
  • Anthriscus vulgaris var. crassus Maire & Weiller
  • Anthriscus vulgaris var. glabrata Regel & Herder
  • Anthriscus vulgaris var. gymnocarpa Moris
  • Anthriscus vulgaris var. hispanica (Rouy) P.Fourn.
  • Anthriscus vulgaris var. neglecta (Boiss. & Reut. ex Lange) Lange
  • Antriscus fetidus Raf.
  • Caucalis scandicina F.H.Wigg.
  • Caucalis scandicina Weber
  • Caucalis scandix Scop.
  • Caucalis scandix-anthriscus Vest

and 13 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.