Dianthus deltoidesL.

Maiden Pinkmaiden pink

WFO wfo-0000643427 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Dianthus deltoides, photographed by Nico
fig. a Nico, CC0 1.0 / 2022-06-11 / obs. 205150266

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
Smithsonian, US National Herbarium
Accession
US 8597
Filed as
Dianthus deltoides L.
Det. by
Rabeler, R. K.
Collected
L. F. Ward 1886-05-13
Origin
US
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC0 1.0)

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 Dianthus deltoides is native: Altay, Buryatiya, Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, West Siberia, Albania, Austria, Baltic States, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Central European Russia, Czechia-Slovakia, Denmark, East European Russia, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, North European Russia, Northwest European Russia, Norway, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Romania, Sicilia, South European Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine AltayBuryatiyaIrkutskKrasnoyarskWest SiberiaAlbaniaAustriaBaltic StatesBelarusBelgiumBulgariaCentral European RussiaCzechia-SlovakiaDenmarkEast European RussiaFinlandFranceGermanyGreeceHungaryItalyNetherlandsNorth European RussiaNorthwest European RussiaNorwayNW. Balkan Pen.PolandRomaniaSiciliaSouth European RussiaSpainSwedenSwitzerlandUkraine
Native distribution of Dianthus deltoides, 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
Denmark DEN
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
Sicilia SIC
South European Russia RUS
Spain SPA
Sweden SWE
Switzerland SWI
Ukraine UKR
Altay ALT ASIA-TEMPERATE
Buryatiya BRY
Irkutsk IRK
Krasnoyarsk KRA
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 1,880 in flower of 1,922 examined

Proportion of examined Dianthus deltoides in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 4 10 40% 17% to 69%
Feb 0 0 too few examined
Mar 2 26 8% 2% to 24%
Apr 2 2 too few examined
May 41 48 85% 73% to 93%
Jun 791 793 100% 99% to 100%
Jul 633 634 100% 99% to 100%
Aug 245 246 100% 98% to 100%
Sep 109 109 100% 97% to 100%
Oct 35 36 97% 86% to 100%
Nov 10 10 100% 72% to 100%
Dec 8 8 100% 68% to 100%

Peak flowering in Sep. Each bar is the share of Dianthus deltoides 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. 1,880 of 1,922 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 2 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.

When it blooms, where you are 1 state

StatePeaksObservations in flower
New Hampshire Jun 119

Where it actually grows measured, from 2,021 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -15.7 °C -7.9 °C -0.3 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 18.3 °C 22.6 °C 26.1 °C
Annual rainfall 548 mm 712 mm 1,449 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 86 mm 121 mm 300 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 2,021 research-grade observations of Dianthus deltoides 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.

Named cultivars 7 recorded

Selections of Dianthus deltoides that somebody named and propagated. A cultivar is not a botanical taxon: it is governed by the cultivated-plant code rather than the botanical one, so it appears in no taxonomic backbone, and it has no native range and no wild population of its own. These get no page here, because a cultivar has no photographs, no range and no flowering data of its own, and a page with none of those is not a page.

From Wikidata (CC0), joined to this species on its World Flora Online identifier, so the link to the parent is exact rather than a name match. This list is what is recorded in an openly licensed register; it is not every cultivar that exists, and for many genera it is not close. Why, and how far short it falls.

Also published as 14 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.

  • Caryophyllus deltoides (L.) Moench
  • Caryophyllus glaucus (L.) Moench
  • Cylichnanthus deltoides (L.) Dulac
  • Dianthus albus Schkuhr ex Steud.
  • Dianthus crenatus Gilib.
  • Dianthus degenii Bald.
  • Dianthus deltoides f. glaucus (L.) P.D.Sell
  • Dianthus deltoides var. glaucus (L.) Trevir.
  • Dianthus deltoides var. montanus Klett & Richt.
  • Dianthus endressii Zahlbr. ex Conrath
  • Dianthus glaucus L.
  • Dianthus supinus Lam.
  • Dianthus volgensis Ser.
  • Silene deltoides (L.) E.H.L.Krause

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.