Clinopodium gracile(Benth.) Kuntze

slender wild basil

WFO wfo-0000891726 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Clinopodium gracile, photographed by lejones417
fig. a lejones417, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-05-16 / obs. 198122529
Clinopodium gracile, photographed by lejones417
fig. b lejones417, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 198173734
Clinopodium gracile, photographed by WATANABE Hitoshi 渡辺仁
fig. c WATANABE Hitoshi 渡辺仁, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 197749497
Clinopodium gracile, photographed by 岸本年郎
fig. d 岸本年郎, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 196730588
Clinopodium gracile, photographed by Daniel Patterson
fig. e Daniel Patterson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 192269696
Clinopodium gracile, photographed by Daniel Patterson
fig. f Daniel Patterson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 187274892
Clinopodium gracile, photographed by Tyler Bishop
fig. g Tyler Bishop, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 130567135
Clinopodium gracile, photographed by mami_t_t
fig. h mami_t_t, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 127663081

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 19 botanical countries

Regions where Clinopodium gracile is native: China South-Central, China Southeast, Japan, Korea, Nansei-shoto, Taiwan, Assam, Borneo, East Himalaya, Jawa, Laos, Lesser Sunda Is., Maluku, Myanmar, Sulawesi, Sumatera, Thailand, Vietnam, West Himalaya China South-CentralChina SoutheastJapanTaiwanAssamBorneoEast HimalayaJawaLaosLesser Sunda Is.MalukuMyanmarSulawesiSumateraThailandVietnamWest Himalaya KoreaNansei-shoto
Native distribution of Clinopodium gracile, 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
Assam ASS ASIA-TROPICAL
Borneo BOR
East Himalaya EHM
Jawa JAW
Laos LAO
Lesser Sunda Is. LSI
Maluku MOL
Myanmar MYA
Sulawesi SUL
Sumatera SUM
Thailand THA
Vietnam VIE
West Himalaya WHM
China South-Central CHC ASIA-TEMPERATE
China Southeast CHS
Japan JAP
Korea KOR
Nansei-shoto NNS
Taiwan TAI

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 330 in flower of 385 examined

Peak flowering in Feb. Each bar is the share of Clinopodium gracile 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. 330 of 385 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 1,965 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -0.5 °C 9.5 °C 14.2 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 21.3 °C 30.0 °C 32.5 °C
Annual rainfall 1,304 mm 3,155 mm 4,588 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 140 mm 322 mm 790 mm

It is found where winters bring light 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 1,965 research-grade observations of Clinopodium gracile 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 9 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.

  • Calamintha argyi H.Lév.
  • Calamintha confinis Hance
  • Calamintha gracilis Benth.
  • Calamintha moluccana Miq.
  • Calamintha radicans Vaniot
  • Clinopodium confine (Hance) Kuntze
  • Clinopodium confine var. globosum C.Y.Wu & S.J.Hsuan ex H.W.Li
  • Satureja confinis (Hance) Kudô
  • Satureja gracilis (Benth.) Nakai

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.