Asparagus horridusL.

WFO wfo-0000632971 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Asparagus horridus, photographed by Santiago Martín-Bravo
fig. a Santiago Martín-Bravo, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-23 / obs. 200117407
Asparagus horridus, photographed by Marc Riera
fig. b Marc Riera, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 196809137
Asparagus horridus, photographed by Henrik Kibak
fig. c Henrik Kibak, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 194055791
Asparagus horridus, photographed by Henrik Kibak
fig. d Henrik Kibak, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 191279332
Asparagus horridus, photographed by Henrik Kibak
fig. e Henrik Kibak, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 190644358
Asparagus horridus, photographed by Tim Johnson
fig. f Tim Johnson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 187242848
Asparagus horridus, photographed by Mirela
fig. g Mirela, CC0 1.0 / obs. 186856847
Asparagus horridus, photographed by Tim Johnson
fig. h Tim Johnson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 185051395

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 20 botanical countries

Regions where Asparagus horridus is native: Algeria, Canary Is., Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Cyprus, East Aegean Is., Gulf States, Lebanon-Syria, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Sinai, Baleares, Greece, Italy, Kriti, Sardegna, Sicilia, Spain AlgeriaEgyptLibyaMoroccoTunisiaCyprusEast Aegean Is.Gulf StatesLebanon-SyriaPalestineSaudi ArabiaSinaiGreeceItalyKritiSiciliaSpain Canary Is.BalearesSardegna
Native distribution of Asparagus horridus, 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
Cyprus CYP ASIA-TEMPERATE
East Aegean Is. EAI
Gulf States GST
Lebanon-Syria LBS
Palestine PAL
Saudi Arabia SAU
Sinai SIN
Baleares BAL EUROPE
Greece GRC
Italy ITA
Kriti KRI
Sardegna SAR
Sicilia SIC
Spain SPA
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Canary Is. CNY
Egypt EGY
Libya LBY
Morocco MOR
Tunisia TUN

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 60 in flower of 192 examined

Peak flowering in Apr. Each bar is the share of Asparagus horridus 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. 60 of 192 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 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 1,558 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 2.6 °C 9.6 °C 12.3 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 25.6 °C 28.5 °C 32.9 °C
Annual rainfall 234 mm 482 mm 734 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 3 mm 22 mm 70 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 1,558 research-grade observations of Asparagus horridus 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 7 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.

  • Asparagus aphyllus subsp. stipularis (Forssk.) K.Richt.
  • Asparagus aphyllus var. stipularis (Forssk.) Baker
  • Asparagus horridus L.f.
  • Asparagus stipularis Forssk.
  • Asparagus stipularis var. brachyclados Boiss.
  • Asparagus stipularis var. horridus Maire & Weiller
  • Asparagus stipularis var. tenuispinus Holmboe

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.