Draba nivalis

yellow arctic draba

WFO wfo-1000084212 Accepted WFO 2026-06 4 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–d · 2 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 2 times, 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 nivalis, photographed by Syd Cannings
fig. a Syd Cannings, CC BY 4.0 / 2020-08-08 / obs. 89206121
Draba nivalis, photographed by Syd Cannings
fig. b Syd Cannings, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 89206131
Draba nivalis, photographed by Allison Gray
fig. c Allison Gray, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 134989536
Draba nivalis, photographed by Syd Cannings
fig. d Syd Cannings, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 89206123

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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 77 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -30.0 °C -21.1 °C -8.4 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 6.5 °C 13.2 °C 17.0 °C
Annual rainfall 282 mm 624 mm 1,453 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 38 mm 87 mm 204 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 77 research-grade observations of Draba nivalis 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 Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.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 13 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 kamtschatica var. glabriuscula N.Busch
  • Draba nivalis f. hebecarpa Pohle
  • Draba nivalis f. leiocarpa Pohle
  • Draba nivalis f. nana O.E.Schulz
  • Draba nivalis f. unalaschkensis Pohle
  • Draba nivalis var. californica Jeps.
  • Draba nivalis var. canadica O.E.Schulz
  • Draba nivalis var. glabrescens O.E.Schulz
  • Draba nivalis var. glabriuscula (N.Busch) Pohle
  • Draba nivalis var. nivalis
  • Draba nivalis var. tenella Lange
  • Draba stellata f. glabrescens Kurtz
  • Draba stellata var. nivalis (Lilj.) Regel

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. USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol DRNI. public domain. Retrieved 2026-07-13.

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. It has no native range either: Kew's checklist does not cover this taxon.