Astragalus bethlehemiticus

Plate 1 figs. a–c · 1 observation

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 1 time, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Astragalus bethlehemiticus, photographed by Aryeh — fig. a Aryeh, CC0 1.0 / 2020-07-22 / obs. 85838163

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 3 botanical countries

Native distribution of Astragalus bethlehemiticus, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Lebanon-Syria	LBS	ASIA-TEMPERATE
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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 53 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	3.5 °C	4.4 °C	5.3 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	31.0 °C	32.0 °C	32.8 °C
Annual rainfall	388 mm	597 mm	625 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	1 mm	2 mm	2 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 53 research-grade observations of Astragalus bethlehemiticus 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 Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.

Also published as 36 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.

Astracantha bethlehemitica (Boiss.) Podlech
Astracantha bombycalyx (Eig) Podlech
Astracantha cuspistipulata (Eig) Podlech
Astracantha lepidantha (Boiss.) Podlech
Astracantha rascheyaensis (Freyn & Bornm.) Podlech
Astracantha spiciformis (Eig) Greuter
Astragalus argyrophyllus Boiss. & Gaill.
Astragalus baalbekensis Bornm.
Astragalus bethlehemiticus subsp. argyrophyllus (Boiss. & Gaill.) Eig
Astragalus bethlehemiticus subsp. lepidanthus (Boiss.) Eig
Astragalus bethlehemiticus subsp. rascheyaensis (Freyn & Bornm.) Eig
Astragalus bethlehemiticus var. antilibanoticus Eig
Astragalus bethlehemiticus var. brachycalyx Eig
Astragalus bethlehemiticus var. capitatus Eig
Astragalus bethlehemiticus var. grandiflorus Eig
Astragalus bethlehemiticus var. halepensis Eig
Astragalus bethlehemiticus var. macranthus Širj.
Astragalus bethlehemiticus var. selemiensis Eig
Astragalus bethlehemiticus var. spicatus Eig
Astragalus bethlehemiticus var. subalpinus Eig
Astragalus bethlehemiticus var. transitans Eig
Astragalus bombycalyx Eig
Astragalus bombycalyx var. breviflorus Eig
Astragalus bombycalyx var. divaricatus Eig

and 12 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
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.