Cardamine amaraL.

WFO wfo-0000586435 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Cardamine amara, photographed by Анна Рыбакова
fig. a Анна Рыбакова, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-12 / obs. 205745739
Cardamine amara, photographed by Lena Perova
fig. b Lena Perova, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203545807
Cardamine amara, photographed by Марина Садыкова
fig. c Марина Садыкова, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203258838
Cardamine amara, photographed by Екатерина Кропочева
fig. d Екатерина Кропочева, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201985315
Cardamine amara, photographed by David Sandler
fig. e David Sandler, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200245086
Cardamine amara, photographed by E. A.
fig. f E. A., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200204795
Cardamine amara, photographed by alcesevropsky
fig. g alcesevropsky, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 199954952
Cardamine amara, photographed by Petra Caltová
fig. h Petra Caltová, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200227596

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 36 botanical countries

Regions where Cardamine amara is native: Altay, Kazakhstan, North Caucasus, Türkiye, West Siberia, Albania, Austria, Baltic States, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Central European Russia, Corse, Czechia-Slovakia, Denmark, East European Russia, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, North European Russia, Northwest European Russia, Norway, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Romania, South European Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine AltayKazakhstanNorth CaucasusTürkiyeWest SiberiaAlbaniaAustriaBaltic StatesBelarusBelgiumBulgariaCentral European RussiaCorseCzechia-SlovakiaDenmarkEast European RussiaFinlandFranceGermanyGreeceHungaryIrelandItalyNetherlandsNorth European RussiaNorthwest European RussiaNorwayNW. Balkan Pen.PolandRomaniaSouth European RussiaSpainSwedenSwitzerlandUkraine
Native distribution of Cardamine amara, 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
Baltic States BLT
Belarus BLR
Belgium BGM
Bulgaria BUL
Central European Russia RUC
Corse COR
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
Denmark DEN
East European Russia RUE
Finland FIN
France FRA
Germany GER
Great Britain GRB
Greece GRC
Hungary HUN
Ireland IRE
Italy ITA
Netherlands NET
North European Russia RUN
Northwest European Russia RUW
Norway NOR
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Romania ROM
South European Russia RUS
Spain SPA
Sweden SWE
Switzerland SWI
Ukraine UKR
Altay ALT ASIA-TEMPERATE
Kazakhstan KAZ
North Caucasus NCS
Türkiye TUR
West Siberia WSB

Not drawn on the map: Great Britain. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is listed rather than guessed at.

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 346 in flower of 421 examined

Peak flowering in May. Each bar is the share of Cardamine amara 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. 346 of 421 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 1,992 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -15.7 °C -8.2 °C -0.5 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 17.8 °C 22.6 °C 24.7 °C
Annual rainfall 551 mm 723 mm 1,480 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 90 mm 115 mm 268 mm

It is found where winters are severely cold. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,992 research-grade observations of Cardamine amara 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.

  • Cardamine amara f. lilacina Beck
  • Cardamine amara f. minor Lange
  • Cardamine amara f. monochlamydea Soó
  • Cardamine amara f. stricta O.E.Schulz
  • Cardamine amara subsp. opizii Čelak.
  • Cardamine amara subsp. siifolia Sennen
  • Cardamine amara var. aequiloba C.Hartm.
  • Cardamine amara var. aquatica Rupr.
  • Cardamine amara var. erubescens Peterm.
  • Cardamine amara var. interrupta O.E.Schulz
  • Cardamine amara var. macrophylla Wender.
  • Cardamine amara var. petiolulata O.E.Schulz
  • Cardamine amara var. subalpina W.D.J.Koch
  • Cardamine amara var. trisecta DC.
  • Cardamine amara var. umbrosa Wimm. & Grab.
  • Cardamine austriaca (Marhold) Landolt
  • Cardamine bicolor Opiz ex J.Presl & C.Presl
  • Cardamine bielzii Schauer
  • Cardamine borealis Laest. ex Nyman
  • Cardamine crassifolia Opiz
  • Cardamine grandis Schur
  • Cardamine libertiana Lej.
  • Cardamine macrophylla Schur
  • Cardamine melananthera Steud.

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. 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.