Crepis vesicariaL.

beaked hawksbeard

WFO wfo-0000043912 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Crepis vesicaria, photographed by Quentin Groom
fig. a Quentin Groom, CC0 1.0 / 2022-05-15 / obs. 197816141

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 26 botanical countries

Regions where Crepis vesicaria is native: Algeria, Canary Is., Madeira, Morocco, Tunisia, East Aegean Is., Türkiye, Albania, Austria, Baleares, Belgium, Corse, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Kriti, Netherlands, NW. Balkan Pen., Portugal, Sardegna, Sicilia, Spain, Switzerland, Türkiye-in-Europe AlgeriaMoroccoTunisiaEast Aegean Is.TürkiyeAlbaniaAustriaBelgiumCorseFranceGermanyGreeceHungaryItalyKritiNetherlandsNW. Balkan Pen.PortugalSiciliaSpainSwitzerlandTürkiye-in-Europe Canary Is.MadeiraBalearesSardegna
Native distribution of Crepis vesicaria, 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
Albania ALB EUROPE
Austria AUT
Baleares BAL
Belgium BGM
Corse COR
France FRA
Germany GER
Greece GRC
Hungary HUN
Italy ITA
Kriti KRI
Netherlands NET
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Portugal POR
Sardegna SAR
Sicilia SIC
Spain SPA
Switzerland SWI
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Canary Is. CNY
Madeira MDR
Morocco MOR
Tunisia TUN
East Aegean Is. EAI ASIA-TEMPERATE
Türkiye TUR

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 326 in flower of 387 examined

Proportion of examined Crepis vesicaria in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 4 11 36% 15% to 65%
Feb 25 36 69% 53% to 82%
Mar 49 68 72% 60% to 81%
Apr 137 148 93% 87% to 96%
May 63 72 88% 78% to 93%
Jun 7 8 88% 53% to 98%
Jul 2 2 too few examined
Aug 2 2 too few examined
Sep 2 4 too few examined
Oct 25 25 100% 87% to 100%
Nov 10 10 100% 72% to 100%
Dec 0 1 too few examined

Peak flowering in Oct. Each bar is the share of Crepis vesicaria 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. 326 of 387 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 4 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 1,589 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -1.1 °C 3.9 °C 9.8 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 18.8 °C 25.9 °C 32.6 °C
Annual rainfall 526 mm 761 mm 1,300 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 7 mm 100 mm 208 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 1,589 research-grade observations of Crepis vesicaria 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 132 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.

  • Barkhausia bivonana Rchb.
  • Barkhausia comata Lowe
  • Barkhausia dubia Lowe
  • Barkhausia floribunda Pomel
  • Barkhausia hackelii Colmeiro
  • Barkhausia haenseleri DC.
  • Barkhausia haensleri Boiss. ex DC.
  • Barkhausia heterocarpa Boiss.
  • Barkhausia hiemalis Spreng.
  • Barkhausia hieracioides Lowe
  • Barkhausia hirsuta Pomel
  • Barkhausia hyemalis Biv.
  • Barkhausia intybacea (Brot.) Spreng.
  • Barkhausia laciniata Lowe
  • Barkhausia laciniata var. integrifolia Lowe
  • Barkhausia laciniata var. laciniata
  • Barkhausia laciniata var. pinnatifida Lowe
  • Barkhausia leucorhodia Rchb.
  • Barkhausia macrophylla (Desf.) Spreng.
  • Barkhausia nicaeensis Link ex Spreng.
  • Barkhausia numidica Pomel
  • Barkhausia praecox Rchb.
  • Barkhausia purpurea Biv.
  • Barkhausia raphanifolia Spreng.

and 108 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. 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.