Cistus ladanifer (brown-eyed rockrose)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Cistus ladanifer, photographed by scolym — fig. a scolym, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-01 / obs. 195751735

Cistus ladanifer, photographed by Elizabete Marchante — fig. d Elizabete Marchante, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 188823409

Cistus ladanifer, photographed by Santiago Martín-Bravo — fig. f Santiago Martín-Bravo, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 187094346

Cistus ladanifer, photographed by Daniel Cahen — fig. g Daniel Cahen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 183095162

Cistus ladanifer, photographed by Henrik Kibak — fig. h Henrik Kibak, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 181430059

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 5 botanical countries

Native distribution of Cistus ladanifer, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
France	FRA	EUROPE
Portugal	POR
Spain	SPA
Algeria	ALG	AFRICA
Morocco	MOR

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 1,030 in flower of 1,567 examined

49%

75%

86%

92%

78%

27%

14%

45%

Proportion of examined Cistus ladanifer in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	47	95	49%	40% to 59%
Feb	107	142	75%	68% to 82%
Mar	215	251	86%	81% to 89%
Apr	388	422	92%	89% to 94%
May	208	268	78%	72% to 82%
Jun	23	84	27%	19% to 38%
Jul	2	41	5%	1% to 16%
Aug	0	63	0%	0% to 6%
Sep	0	42	0%	0% to 8%
Oct	4	43	9%	4% to 22%
Nov	7	51	14%	7% to 26%
Dec	29	65	45%	33% to 57%

Peak flowering in Apr. Each bar is the share of Cistus ladanifer 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. 1,030 of 1,567 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.

Also published as 35 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.

Cistus grandiflorus Pourr. ex Willk. & Lange
Cistus ladanifer f. albiflorus (Dunal) Dans.
Cistus ladanifer f. angustifolius Daveau
Cistus ladanifer f. bicolor Demoly
Cistus ladanifer f. concolor Dans.
Cistus ladanifer f. concolor Sennen & Pau
Cistus ladanifer f. discolor Sennen & Pau
Cistus ladanifer f. discolor Dans.
Cistus ladanifer f. guttatus (Maire) Dans.
Cistus ladanifer f. immaculatus Dans.
Cistus ladanifer f. inmaculatus Dans.
Cistus ladanifer f. latifolius Daveau
Cistus ladanifer f. maculatus (Dunal) Dans.
Cistus ladanifer prol. angustifolius (Daveau) Sennen & Cadevall
Cistus ladanifer subsp. africanus Dans.
Cistus ladanifer subsp. angustifolius (Daveau) Sennen & Pau
Cistus ladanifer subsp. europaeus Dans.
Cistus ladanifer subsp. mauritii Pau & Sennen
Cistus ladanifer subsp. subcatus (Dunal) P.Monts.
Cistus ladanifer subvar. guttatus Maire
Cistus ladanifer unranked immaculatus W.E.Lawr.
Cistus ladanifer var. albiflorus Dunal
Cistus ladanifer var. angustifolius (Daveau) Sennen & Pau
Cistus ladanifer var. genuinus Daveau

and 11 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
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.