Crithmum maritimumL.

Sea fennelrock samphiresamphire

WFO wfo-0001068458 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Crithmum maritimum, photographed by desertnaturalist
fig. a desertnaturalist, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-09 / obs. 205978810

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
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Accession
K001400614
Filed as
Crithmum maritimum L.
Det. by
Christenhusz, M.J.M.
Collected
Christenhusz, M.J.M. 2020-08-21
Origin
GB
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

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 34 botanical countries

Regions where Crithmum maritimum is native: Algeria, Azores, Canary Is., Egypt, Libya, Madeira, Morocco, Tunisia, Cyprus, East Aegean Is., Lebanon-Syria, North Caucasus, Palestine, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, Albania, Baleares, Bulgaria, Corse, France, Great Britain, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Kriti, Krym, Netherlands, NW. Balkan Pen., Portugal, Romania, Sardegna, Sicilia, Spain, Türkiye-in-Europe AlgeriaEgyptLibyaMoroccoTunisiaCyprusEast Aegean Is.Lebanon-SyriaNorth CaucasusPalestineTranscaucasusTürkiyeAlbaniaBulgariaCorseFranceGreeceIrelandItalyKritiKrymNetherlandsNW. Balkan Pen.PortugalRomaniaSiciliaSpainTürkiye-in-Europe AzoresCanary Is.MadeiraBalearesSardegna
Native distribution of Crithmum maritimum, 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
Baleares BAL
Bulgaria BUL
Corse COR
France FRA
Great Britain GRB
Greece GRC
Ireland IRE
Italy ITA
Kriti KRI
Krym KRY
Netherlands NET
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Portugal POR
Romania ROM
Sardegna SAR
Sicilia SIC
Spain SPA
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Azores AZO
Canary Is. CNY
Egypt EGY
Libya LBY
Madeira MDR
Morocco MOR
Tunisia TUN
Cyprus CYP ASIA-TEMPERATE
East Aegean Is. EAI
Lebanon-Syria LBS
North Caucasus NCS
Palestine PAL
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR

Not drawn on the map: Great Britain. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is 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 759 in flower of 1,449 examined

Proportion of examined Crithmum maritimum in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 11 40 28% 16% to 43%
Feb 9 49 18% 10% to 31%
Mar 6 39 15% 7% to 30%
Apr 1 60 2% 0% to 9%
May 9 61 15% 8% to 26%
Jun 17 68 25% 16% to 36%
Jul 143 264 54% 48% to 60%
Aug 342 412 83% 79% to 86%
Sep 152 222 68% 62% to 74%
Oct 46 126 37% 29% to 45%
Nov 10 46 22% 12% to 36%
Dec 13 62 21% 13% to 33%

Peak flowering in Aug. Each bar is the share of Crithmum maritimum 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. 759 of 1,449 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 1,999 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 3.0 °C 7.2 °C 12.8 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 17.7 °C 24.9 °C 29.2 °C
Annual rainfall 459 mm 818 mm 1,681 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 7 mm 111 mm 242 mm

It is found where winters are cool but frost is light or absent. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,999 research-grade observations of Crithmum maritimum 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 2 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.

  • Cachrys maritima (L.) Spreng.
  • Crithmum canariense Cav.

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.