Diplotaxis erucoides(L.) DC.

white wallrocket

WFO wfo-0000650432 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Diplotaxis erucoides, photographed by Pete Bradshaw
fig. a Pete Bradshaw, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-06 / obs. 204206374

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 3019215
Filed as
Diplotaxis erucoides (L.) DC.
Det. by
Mifsud, Stephen
Collected
P. H. W. Taubert 1887-02-17
Origin
MT
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 23 botanical countries

Regions where Diplotaxis erucoides is native: Algeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Morocco, Sudan-South Sudan, Tunisia, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon-Syria, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Sinai, Türkiye, Yemen, Baleares, Corse, France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Sardegna, Sicilia, Spain AlgeriaEgyptEthiopiaMoroccoSudan-South SudanTunisiaIranIraqLebanon-SyriaPalestineSaudi ArabiaSinaiTürkiyeYemenCorseFranceGreeceItalyPortugalSiciliaSpain BalearesSardegna
Native distribution of Diplotaxis erucoides, 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
Baleares BAL EUROPE
Corse COR
France FRA
Greece GRC
Italy ITA
Portugal POR
Sardegna SAR
Sicilia SIC
Spain SPA
Iran IRN ASIA-TEMPERATE
Iraq IRQ
Lebanon-Syria LBS
Palestine PAL
Saudi Arabia SAU
Sinai SIN
Türkiye TUR
Yemen YEM
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Egypt EGY
Ethiopia ETH
Morocco MOR
Sudan-South Sudan SUD
Tunisia TUN

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 977 in flower of 980 examined

Proportion of examined Diplotaxis erucoides in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 100 100 100% 96% to 100%
Feb 163 163 100% 98% to 100%
Mar 173 173 100% 98% to 100%
Apr 155 155 100% 98% to 100%
May 66 66 100% 95% to 100%
Jun 17 18 94% 74% to 99%
Jul 8 8 100% 68% to 100%
Aug 13 13 100% 77% to 100%
Sep 32 32 100% 89% to 100%
Oct 79 79 100% 95% to 100%
Nov 75 76 99% 93% to 100%
Dec 96 97 99% 94% to 100%

Peak flowering in Jan. Each bar is the share of Diplotaxis erucoides 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. 977 of 980 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 1,960 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -0.5 °C 3.7 °C 9.4 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 25.5 °C 27.9 °C 32.2 °C
Annual rainfall 386 mm 652 mm 967 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 18 mm 98 mm 154 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 1,960 research-grade observations of Diplotaxis erucoides 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 28 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.

  • Brassica apula (Ten.) Janka
  • Brassica erucoides Boiss.
  • Crucifera erucoides E.H.L.Krause
  • Diplotaxis apula (Ten.) Ten.
  • Diplotaxis erucoides f. valentina (Pau) Maire
  • Diplotaxis erucoides subsp. erucoides
  • Diplotaxis erucoides var. erucoides
  • Diplotaxis erucoides var. valentina (Pau) O.E.Schultz
  • Diplotaxis hispidula Ten.
  • Diplotaxis leiocarpa Gand.
  • Diplotaxis longisiliqua Gand.
  • Diplotaxis platystylos Willk.
  • Diplotaxis ruscinonensis Gand.
  • Diplotaxis sagotii Gand.
  • Diplotaxis valentina Pau
  • Diplotaxis versicolor Porta
  • Diplotaxis virgata var. platystylos (Willk.) Willk.
  • Diplotaxis virgata var. platystylos (Willk.) Nyman
  • Diplotaxis virgata var. platystylos Willk.
  • Eruca hispida DC.
  • Erucastrum cossonianum Reut.
  • Erucastrum erucoides Calest.
  • Euzomum erucoides Spach
  • Malcolmia arabica Velen.

and 4 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.