Daphne mezereumL.

Mezereonparadise plant

WFO wfo-0000637755 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Daphne mezereum, photographed by Jason Grant
fig. a Jason Grant, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-02 / obs. 202771890
Daphne mezereum, photographed by Евгений Егорейченков
fig. b Евгений Егорейченков, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201808709
Daphne mezereum, photographed by Thorsten Hackbarth
fig. c Thorsten Hackbarth, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201335359
Daphne mezereum, photographed by Tobias Schönberg
fig. d Tobias Schönberg, CC0 1.0 / obs. 201327209
Daphne mezereum, photographed by Wolfgang Jauch
fig. e Wolfgang Jauch, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200988203
Daphne mezereum, photographed by Attila Oláh
fig. f Attila Oláh, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201200678
Daphne mezereum, photographed by Thomas Koffel
fig. g Thomas Koffel, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199694505
Daphne mezereum, photographed by Guillaume Hoffmann
fig. h Guillaume Hoffmann, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 197888836

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
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
4210202
Filed as
Daphne mezereum L.
Det. by
not recorded on this sheet
Collected
not recorded
Origin
not recorded
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 35 botanical countries

Regions where Daphne mezereum is native: Altay, Iran, Kazakhstan, North Caucasus, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, West Siberia, Albania, Austria, Baltic States, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Central European Russia, Czechia-Slovakia, East European Russia, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, North European Russia, Northwest European Russia, Norway, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Romania, South European Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine AltayIranKazakhstanNorth CaucasusTranscaucasusTürkiyeWest SiberiaAlbaniaAustriaBaltic StatesBelarusBelgiumBulgariaCentral European RussiaCzechia-SlovakiaEast European RussiaFinlandFranceGermanyGreeceHungaryItalyNetherlandsNorth European RussiaNorthwest European RussiaNorwayNW. Balkan Pen.PolandRomaniaSouth European RussiaSpainSwedenSwitzerlandUkraine
Native distribution of Daphne mezereum, 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.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Albania ALB EUROPE
Austria AUT
Baltic States BLT
Belarus BLR
Belgium BGM
Bulgaria BUL
Central European Russia RUC
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
East European Russia RUE
Finland FIN
France FRA
Germany GER
Great Britain GRB
Greece GRC
Hungary HUN
Italy ITA
Netherlands NET
North European Russia RUN
Northwest European Russia RUW
Norway NOR
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Romania ROM
South European Russia RUS
Spain SPA
Sweden SWE
Switzerland SWI
Ukraine UKR
Altay ALT ASIA-TEMPERATE
Iran IRN
Kazakhstan KAZ
North Caucasus NCS
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR
West Siberia WSB

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 1,881 in flower of 2,702 examined

Peak flowering in Feb. Each bar is the share of Daphne mezereum 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. 1,881 of 2,702 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.

When it blooms, where you are 1 state

StatePeaksObservations in flower
Vermont May 154

Where it actually grows measured, from 2,010 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -19.0 °C -8.7 °C -2.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 16.1 °C 21.9 °C 24.9 °C
Annual rainfall 548 mm 866 mm 1,837 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 77 mm 137 mm 344 mm

It is found where winters are severely cold. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 2,010 research-grade observations of Daphne mezereum 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 25 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.

  • Daphne albiflora J.P.Wolff
  • Daphne florida Salisb.
  • Daphne lateriflora Raf.
  • Daphne lateriflora St.-Lag.
  • Daphne liottardi Vill.
  • Daphne mezereum f. alba (Weston) Rehder
  • Daphne mezereum f. grandiflora (Jacques) Schelle
  • Daphne mezereum f. plena C.K.Schneid.
  • Daphne mezereum f. variegata (E.J.Lowe & W.Howard) Rehder
  • Daphne mezereum var. alba Weston
  • Daphne mezereum var. alba-plena Rehder
  • Daphne mezereum var. albaplena Rehder
  • Daphne mezereum var. albida Meisn.
  • Daphne mezereum var. album Aiton
  • Daphne mezereum var. grandiflora Jacques
  • Daphne mezereum var. rubra Aiton
  • Daphne mezereum var. rubrum Aiton
  • Daphne mezereum var. variegata E.J.Lowe & W.Howard
  • Daphne rechingeri Wendelbo
  • Daphne rubrum (Aiton) P.B.Mead
  • Daphne variegata J.Dix
  • Laureola foemina Garsault
  • Mezereum officinarum C.A.Mey.
  • Thymelaea mezereum (L.) Scop.

and 1 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.