Cherleria arctica(Steven ex Ser.) A.J.Moore & Dillenb.

arctic stitchwort

WFO wfo-1000085777 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Cherleria arctica, photographed by Nicolás Lavandero
fig. a Nicolás Lavandero, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-01-19 / obs. 179210769
Cherleria arctica, photographed by Romi Galeota Lencina
fig. b Romi Galeota Lencina, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 173232061
Cherleria arctica, photographed by Romi Galeota Lencina
fig. c Romi Galeota Lencina, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 173131606
Cherleria arctica, photographed by Romi Galeota Lencina
fig. d Romi Galeota Lencina, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 173030983
Cherleria arctica, photographed by Nicolas Olejnik
fig. e Nicolas Olejnik, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 116229114
Cherleria arctica, photographed by aacocucci
fig. f aacocucci, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 109872373
Cherleria arctica, photographed by Aira Francisca Faúndez Fallau
fig. g Aira Francisca Faúndez Fallau, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 106252436
Cherleria arctica, photographed by Nolan Exe
fig. h Nolan Exe, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 60007838

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.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
Smithsonian, US National Herbarium
Accession
US 129242-2
Filed as
Cherleria arctica (Steven ex Ser.) A.J.Moore & Dillenb.
Det. by
Strong, M. T., (US), Smithsonian Institution - National Museum of Natural History (UNITED STATES)
Collected
C. McKay 1881-07-21
Origin
US
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC0 1.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 25 botanical countries

Regions where Cherleria arctica is native: Altay, Amur, Buryatiya, Chita, Irkutsk, Japan, Kamchatka, Kazakhstan, Khabarovsk, Korea, Krasnoyarsk, Kuril Is., Magadan, Manchuria, Mongolia, Primorye, Sakhalin, Tuva, West Siberia, Yakutiya, North European Russia, Alaska, Aleutian Is., Northwest Territories, Yukon AltayAmurBuryatiyaChitaIrkutskJapanKamchatkaKazakhstanKhabarovskKrasnoyarskMagadanManchuriaMongoliaPrimoryeSakhalinTuvaWest SiberiaYakutiyaNorth European RussiaAlaskaNorthwest TerritoriesYukon Korea
Native distribution of Cherleria arctica, 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. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Altay ALT ASIA-TEMPERATE
Amur AMU
Buryatiya BRY
Chita CTA
Irkutsk IRK
Japan JAP
Kamchatka KAM
Kazakhstan KAZ
Khabarovsk KHA
Korea KOR
Krasnoyarsk KRA
Kuril Is. KUR
Magadan MAG
Manchuria CHM
Mongolia MON
Primorye PRM
Sakhalin SAK
Tuva TVA
West Siberia WSB
Yakutiya YAK
Alaska ASK NORTHERN AMERICA
Aleutian Is. ALU
Northwest Territories NWT
Yukon YUK
North European Russia RUN EUROPE

Not drawn on the map: Kuril Is., Aleutian Is.. We hold no public-domain boundary for these regions, so they are 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 65 in flower of 65 examined

Peak flowering in Jan. Each bar is the share of Cherleria arctica 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. 65 of 65 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 7 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 467 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -34.9 °C -26.5 °C -17.5 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 8.9 °C 14.3 °C 17.9 °C
Annual rainfall 372 mm 779 mm 2,225 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 35 mm 95 mm 343 mm

It is found where winters are arctic. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 467 research-grade observations of Cherleria arctica 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 20 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.

  • Alsine arctica (Steven ex Ser.) Fenzl
  • Alsine pumilio Fenzl
  • Alsinopsis arctica (Steven ex Ser.) A.Heller
  • Arenaria altaica Fisch. ex DC.
  • Arenaria arctica Steven ex Ser.
  • Arenaria arctica var. caespitosa (Torr.) S.Watson
  • Arenaria arctica var. grandiflora Hook.
  • Arenaria arctica var. minor Hook.
  • Arenaria arctica var. rebunensis T.Shimizu
  • Arenaria arctica var. stenopetala Hook.
  • Arenaria bryoides Fisch. ex Ser.
  • Arenaria grandiflora Pall.
  • Arenaria laricifolia var. caespitosa Torr.
  • Arenaria pumilio R.Br. ex Hook.
  • Arenaria sedifolia Nasarow
  • Arenaria serpens Fisch. ex Ser.
  • Arenaria stenopetala Turcz.
  • Lidia arctica (Steven ex Ser.) Á.Löve & D.Löve
  • Minuartia arctica (Steven) Graebn.
  • Sagina pumilio (R.Br. ex Hook.) Simmons

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. USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol MIAR3. public domain. 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.