Astrantia majorL.

Great Masterwortgreat masterwortgreater masterwort

WFO wfo-0000554832 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Astrantia major, photographed by CorentinD
fig. a CorentinD, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-13 / obs. 207095626
Astrantia major, photographed by Tim Johnson
fig. b Tim Johnson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205134809
Astrantia major, photographed by Tobias Schönberg
fig. c Tobias Schönberg, CC0 1.0 / obs. 203643390
Astrantia major, photographed by Tobias Schönberg
fig. d Tobias Schönberg, CC0 1.0 / obs. 202261149
Astrantia major, photographed by Pavel Kacl
fig. e Pavel Kacl, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201292795
Astrantia major, photographed by Daniel Linzbauer
fig. f Daniel Linzbauer, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 166322996
Astrantia major, photographed by Harrison J Elkins
fig. g Harrison J Elkins, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 168834160
Astrantia major, photographed by Marco Mussita
fig. h Marco Mussita, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 161047532

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 17 botanical countries

Regions where Astrantia major is native: North Caucasus, Albania, Austria, Belarus, Bulgaria, Czechia-Slovakia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine North CaucasusAlbaniaAustriaBelarusBulgariaCzechia-SlovakiaFranceGermanyGreeceHungaryItalyNW. Balkan Pen.PolandRomaniaSpainSwitzerlandUkraine
Native distribution of Astrantia major, 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.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Albania ALB EUROPE
Austria AUT
Belarus BLR
Bulgaria BUL
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
France FRA
Germany GER
Greece GRC
Hungary HUN
Italy ITA
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Romania ROM
Spain SPA
Switzerland SWI
Ukraine UKR
North Caucasus NCS ASIA-TEMPERATE

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 790 in flower of 820 examined

Peak flowering in Oct. Each bar is the share of Astrantia major 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. 790 of 820 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 5 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 1,988 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -12.6 °C -7.4 °C -1.7 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 15.8 °C 20.1 °C 23.8 °C
Annual rainfall 717 mm 1,415 mm 2,203 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 111 mm 237 mm 428 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 1,988 research-grade observations of Astrantia major 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 34 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.

  • Astrantia australis Huter & Porta ex H.Wolff
  • Astrantia candida Mill.
  • Astrantia carinthiaca Hoppe ex W.D.J.Koch
  • Astrantia caucasica Willd. ex Spreng.
  • Astrantia ceretanica Sennen
  • Astrantia elatior Friv.
  • Astrantia europaea L. ex Rehmann
  • Astrantia intermedia M.Bieb.
  • Astrantia major f. caucasica (Willd. ex Spreng.) Bolzon
  • Astrantia major f. integra (F.Malý) I.Asenov
  • Astrantia major subsp. involucrata (W.D.J.Koch) Ces.
  • Astrantia major subsp. ranunculifolia (Rchb.f.) Juel, R.E.Fr. & Örtendahl
  • Astrantia major var. apenninica (Wörz) Reduron
  • Astrantia major var. brevicaule Losa & P.Monts.
  • Astrantia major var. illyrica Borbás
  • Astrantia major var. integra K.Malý
  • Astrantia major var. intermedia Boiss.
  • Astrantia major var. involucrata W.D.J.Koch
  • Astrantia major var. major Wimm. & Grab.
  • Astrantia major var. major-pallida Mert. & W.D.J.Koch
  • Astrantia major var. major-rosea Mert. & W.D.J.Koch
  • Astrantia major var. maxima Kuntze
  • Astrantia major var. minor Wimm. & Grab.
  • Astrantia major var. minor-pallida Mert. & W.D.J.Koch

and 10 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.