Carlina acaulisL.

WFO wfo-0000090349 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Carlina acaulis, photographed by Katrin Simon
fig. a Katrin Simon, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-04 / obs. 203770590
Carlina acaulis, photographed by Christian Berg
fig. b Christian Berg, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 193843738
Carlina acaulis, photographed by Carroll
fig. c Carroll, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 191749075
Carlina acaulis, photographed by David Sandler
fig. d David Sandler, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 185497452
Carlina acaulis, photographed by Eleftherios Katsillis
fig. e Eleftherios Katsillis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 166050465
Carlina acaulis, photographed by Eleftherios Katsillis
fig. f Eleftherios Katsillis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 166047601
Carlina acaulis, photographed by Attila Oláh
fig. g Attila Oláh, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 166294371
Carlina acaulis, photographed by Marco Mussita
fig. h Marco Mussita, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 163073686

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 Carlina acaulis is native: Transcaucasus, Albania, Austria, Belarus, Bulgaria, Czechia-Slovakia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine TranscaucasusAlbaniaAustriaBelarusBulgariaCzechia-SlovakiaFranceGermanyGreeceHungaryItalyNW. Balkan Pen.PolandRomaniaSpainSwitzerlandUkraine
Native distribution of Carlina acaulis, 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
Transcaucasus TCS 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 845 in flower of 1,257 examined

Peak flowering in Aug. Each bar is the share of Carlina acaulis 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. 845 of 1,257 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 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 1,980 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -15.4 °C -9.1 °C -3.5 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 14.1 °C 18.1 °C 23.2 °C
Annual rainfall 766 mm 1,414 mm 2,393 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 115 mm 232 mm 456 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 1,980 research-grade observations of Carlina acaulis 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 27 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.

  • Carlina acaulis subsp. aggregata (Willd.) Hegi
  • Carlina acaulis subsp. simplex (Waldst. & Kit.) Nyman
  • Carlina acaulis var. acaulis
  • Carlina acaulis var. caulescens (Lam.) Rchb.
  • Carlina acaulis var. eckartsbergensis Ilse
  • Carlina aggregata Willd.
  • Carlina aggregata f. aggregata
  • Carlina aggregata f. nana Degen
  • Carlina aggregata subsp. aggregata
  • Carlina alpina Jacq.
  • Carlina caulescens Lam.
  • Carlina chamaeleon Vill.
  • Carlina cirsioides Klokov
  • Carlina decurrens Vandas
  • Carlina elatior Wallr.
  • Carlina grandiflora Moench
  • Carlina officinalis Bubani
  • Carlina simplex Waldst. & Kit.
  • Carlina simplex var. polycephala Schur
  • Carlina simplex var. ramosa Formánek
  • Carlina simplex var. simplex
  • Carlina subacaulis DC.
  • Carlina subacaulis var. aggregata (Willd.) DC.
  • Carlina subacaulis var. caulescens (Lam.) DC.

and 3 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.