Bupleurum falcatumL.

Chinese ThoroughwaxSickle-leaf Hare's Ear

WFO wfo-0000575240 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Bupleurum falcatum, photographed by Pavel Kacl
fig. a Pavel Kacl, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-28 / obs. 201310973

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 21 botanical countries

Regions where Bupleurum falcatum is native: North Caucasus, Transcaucasus, Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Central European Russia, Corse, Czechia-Slovakia, East European Russia, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Krym, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Romania, South European Russia, Switzerland, Ukraine North CaucasusTranscaucasusAlbaniaAustriaBelgiumBulgariaCentral European RussiaCorseCzechia-SlovakiaEast European RussiaFranceGermanyHungaryItalyKrymNW. Balkan Pen.PolandRomaniaSouth European RussiaSwitzerlandUkraine
Native distribution of Bupleurum falcatum, 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
Belgium BGM
Bulgaria BUL
Central European Russia RUC
Corse COR
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
East European Russia RUE
France FRA
Germany GER
Hungary HUN
Italy ITA
Krym KRY
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Romania ROM
South European Russia RUS
Switzerland SWI
Ukraine UKR
North Caucasus NCS ASIA-TEMPERATE
Transcaucasus TCS

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 131 in flower of 168 examined

Proportion of examined Bupleurum falcatum in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 1 2 too few examined
Feb 0 3 too few examined
Mar 2 5 40% 12% to 77%
Apr 1 10 10% 2% to 40%
May 5 15 33% 15% to 58%
Jun 17 19 89% 69% to 97%
Jul 38 41 93% 81% to 97%
Aug 27 28 96% 82% to 99%
Sep 20 21 95% 77% to 99%
Oct 9 12 75% 47% to 91%
Nov 9 10 90% 60% to 98%
Dec 2 2 too few examined

Peak flowering in Aug. Each bar is the share of Bupleurum falcatum 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. 131 of 168 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 3 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 1,655 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -10.7 °C -4.1 °C -0.6 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 20.0 °C 24.2 °C 26.3 °C
Annual rainfall 525 mm 645 mm 1,307 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 79 mm 117 mm 236 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 1,655 research-grade observations of Bupleurum falcatum 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 58 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.

  • Bupleurum antiochium Post
  • Bupleurum chlorocarpum Timb.-Lagr. & Jeanb.
  • Bupleurum corsicum Coss. & Kralik
  • Bupleurum dilatatum Schur
  • Bupleurum falcatum f. angustifolium Schur
  • Bupleurum falcatum f. angustifolium (Lamotte) H.Wolff
  • Bupleurum falcatum f. elatum Schur
  • Bupleurum falcatum f. ellipticum Schur
  • Bupleurum falcatum f. elongatum (Briq.) H.Wolff
  • Bupleurum falcatum f. giganteum Schur
  • Bupleurum falcatum f. lato-oblongum Schur
  • Bupleurum falcatum f. montenegrinum H.Wolff
  • Bupleurum falcatum f. multicaule Schur
  • Bupleurum falcatum f. petiolare (Lapeyr.) H.Wolff
  • Bupleurum falcatum f. polymorphum Schur
  • Bupleurum falcatum f. suborbiculatum Schur
  • Bupleurum falcatum f. subspathulatum Schur
  • Bupleurum falcatum f. typicum H.Wolff
  • Bupleurum falcatum subf. longiradium H.Wolff
  • Bupleurum falcatum subf. normale H.Wolff
  • Bupleurum falcatum subf. pusillum (Schur) H.Wolff
  • Bupleurum falcatum subsp. eufalcatum H.Wolff
  • Bupleurum falcatum subvar. elongatum Briq.
  • Bupleurum falcatum subvar. petiolare (Lapeyr.) Briq.

and 34 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.