Draba lacteaAdams

milky draba

WFO wfo-0000655587 Accepted WFO 2026-06 3 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–c · 1 observation

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 1 time, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Draba lactea, photographed by Eric Lamb
fig. a Eric Lamb, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-07-11 / obs. 160361237
Draba lactea, photographed by Eric Lamb
fig. b Eric Lamb, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 160361249
Draba lactea, photographed by Eric Lamb
fig. c Eric Lamb, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 160361264

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 22 botanical countries

Regions where Draba lactea is native: Kamchatka, Krasnoyarsk, Magadan, West Siberia, Yakutiya, East European Russia, Finland, Iceland, North European Russia, Norway, Svalbard, Sweden, Alaska, Aleutian Is., British Columbia, Greenland, Labrador, Newfoundland, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Québec, Yukon KamchatkaKrasnoyarskMagadanWest SiberiaYakutiyaEast European RussiaFinlandIcelandNorth European RussiaNorwaySvalbardSwedenAlaskaBritish ColumbiaGreenlandLabradorNewfoundlandNorthwest TerritoriesNunavutQuébecYukon
Native distribution of Draba lactea, 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
Alaska ASK NORTHERN AMERICA
Aleutian Is. ALU
British Columbia BRC
Greenland GNL
Labrador LAB
Newfoundland NFL
Northwest Territories NWT
Nunavut NUN
Québec QUE
Yukon YUK
East European Russia RUE EUROPE
Finland FIN
Iceland ICE
North European Russia RUN
Norway NOR
Svalbard SVA
Sweden SWE
Kamchatka KAM ASIA-TEMPERATE
Krasnoyarsk KRA
Magadan MAG
West Siberia WSB
Yakutiya YAK

Not drawn on the map: Aleutian Is.. 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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 69 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -36.3 °C -24.4 °C -18.2 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 2.5 °C 10.2 °C 15.5 °C
Annual rainfall 219 mm 394 mm 716 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 26 mm 53 mm 119 mm

It is found where winters are arctic. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 69 research-grade observations of Draba lactea 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.

Also published as 21 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.

  • Draba allenii Fernald
  • Draba bocheri Gjaerev. & Ryvarden
  • Draba boecheri Gjaerev. & Ryvarden
  • Draba fernaldiana Polunin
  • Draba lactea f. androsacea Ekman
  • Draba lactea f. heterotricha Ekman
  • Draba lactea f. trichocarpa O.E.Schulz
  • Draba lactea subsp. pseudopilosa (Pohle) Kozhevn.
  • Draba lactea var. glabrata (Lindblom) O.E.Schulz
  • Draba lactea var. pilosissima O.E.Schulz
  • Draba lactea var. pseudopilosa (Pohle) O.E.Schulz
  • Draba lactea var. robusta O.E.Schulz
  • Draba lactea var. tenuisiliqua O.E.Schulz
  • Draba lapponica Willd. ex DC.
  • Draba pseudopilosa Pohle
  • Draba wahlenbergii Hartm.
  • Draba wahlenbergii f. glabrata (Lindblom) E.Ekman
  • Draba wahlenbergii var. androsacea E.Ekman
  • Draba wahlenbergii var. glabrata Lindblom
  • Draba wahlenbergii var. heterotricha Lindblom
  • Draba wahlenbergii var. tenuisiliqua Lange ex Rosenv.

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.