Asteriscus aquaticus(L.) Less.

WFO wfo-0000014527 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Asteriscus aquaticus, photographed by Rafael Medina
fig. a Rafael Medina, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-22 / obs. 199706658

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
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Accession
K000341512
Filed as
Asteriscus aquaticus (L.) Less.
Det. by
Kandemir, A.
Collected
Day, C.D. 1918-07-06
Origin
TR
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 25 botanical countries

Regions where Asteriscus aquaticus is native: Algeria, Canary Is., Egypt, Libya, Madeira, Morocco, Tunisia, Cyprus, East Aegean Is., Lebanon-Syria, Palestine, Türkiye, Albania, Baleares, Bulgaria, France, Greece, Italy, Kriti, NW. Balkan Pen., Portugal, Sardegna, Sicilia, Spain, Türkiye-in-Europe AlgeriaEgyptLibyaMoroccoTunisiaCyprusEast Aegean Is.Lebanon-SyriaPalestineTürkiyeAlbaniaBulgariaFranceGreeceItalyKritiNW. Balkan Pen.PortugalSiciliaSpainTürkiye-in-Europe Canary Is.MadeiraBalearesSardegna
Native distribution of Asteriscus aquaticus, 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
Baleares BAL
Bulgaria BUL
France FRA
Greece GRC
Italy ITA
Kriti KRI
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Portugal POR
Sardegna SAR
Sicilia SIC
Spain SPA
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Canary Is. CNY
Egypt EGY
Libya LBY
Madeira MDR
Morocco MOR
Tunisia TUN
Cyprus CYP ASIA-TEMPERATE
East Aegean Is. EAI
Lebanon-Syria LBS
Palestine PAL
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 173 in flower of 176 examined

Proportion of examined Asteriscus aquaticus in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 2 2 too few examined
Feb 0 1 too few examined
Mar 11 12 92% 65% to 99%
Apr 47 47 100% 92% to 100%
May 83 83 100% 96% to 100%
Jun 26 26 100% 87% to 100%
Jul 4 4 too few examined
Aug 0 0 too few examined
Sep 0 0 too few examined
Oct 0 0 too few examined
Nov 0 0 too few examined
Dec 0 1 too few examined

Peak flowering in Apr. Each bar is the share of Asteriscus aquaticus 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. 173 of 176 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 8 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 984 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 0.7 °C 6.9 °C 16.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 22.5 °C 29.0 °C 33.2 °C
Annual rainfall 300 mm 455 mm 769 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 5 mm 27 mm 72 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 984 research-grade observations of Asteriscus aquaticus 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 14 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.

  • Asteriscus aquaticus subsp. aquaticus
  • Asteriscus aquaticus subsp. nanus (Boiss.) O.Bolòs & Vigo
  • Asteriscus aquaticus var. aquaticus
  • Asteriscus aquaticus var. nanus Boiss.
  • Asteriscus citriodorus Heldr. & Halácsy
  • Asteriscus confusus Sennen
  • Asteriscus morrisonii Bubani
  • Asteriscus nanus (Boiss.) Nyman
  • Asteriscus sessilis Moench
  • Bubonium aquaticum Hill
  • Bubonium aquaticum subsp. aquaticum
  • Buphthalmum aquaticum L.
  • Nauplius aquaticus Cass.
  • Odontospermum aquaticum Sch.Bip.

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.