Dracocephalum nutansL.

WFO wfo-0000945405 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Dracocephalum nutans, photographed by Борис Георги
fig. a Борис Георги, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-12 / obs. 205799530
Dracocephalum nutans, photographed by Екатерина Гущина
fig. b Екатерина Гущина, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204693767
Dracocephalum nutans, photographed by Pavel Komkov
fig. c Pavel Komkov, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205398809
Dracocephalum nutans, photographed by Tatiana Strus
fig. d Tatiana Strus, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204060891
Dracocephalum nutans, photographed by Oleg Kosterin
fig. e Oleg Kosterin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205444656
Dracocephalum nutans, photographed by Нурхайдарова Татьяна
fig. f Нурхайдарова Татьяна, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203429340
Dracocephalum nutans, photographed by Нурхайдарова Татьяна
fig. g Нурхайдарова Татьяна, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201553270
Dracocephalum nutans, photographed by Оксана Серикова
fig. h Оксана Серикова, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203499849

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 20 botanical countries

Regions where Dracocephalum nutans is native: Altay, Amur, Buryatiya, Chita, Inner Mongolia, Irkutsk, Kazakhstan, Khabarovsk, Kirgizstan, Krasnoyarsk, Manchuria, Mongolia, Primorye, Tadzhikistan, Tuva, West Siberia, Xinjiang, Yakutiya, West Himalaya, South European Russia AltayAmurBuryatiyaChitaInner MongoliaIrkutskKazakhstanKhabarovskKirgizstanKrasnoyarskManchuriaMongoliaPrimoryeTadzhikistanTuvaWest SiberiaXinjiangYakutiyaWest HimalayaSouth European Russia
Native distribution of Dracocephalum nutans, 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
Altay ALT ASIA-TEMPERATE
Amur AMU
Buryatiya BRY
Chita CTA
Inner Mongolia CHI
Irkutsk IRK
Kazakhstan KAZ
Khabarovsk KHA
Kirgizstan KGZ
Krasnoyarsk KRA
Manchuria CHM
Mongolia MON
Primorye PRM
Tadzhikistan TZK
Tuva TVA
West Siberia WSB
Xinjiang CHX
Yakutiya YAK
West Himalaya WHM ASIA-TROPICAL
South European Russia RUS EUROPE

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 99 in flower of 100 examined

Peak flowering in May. Each bar is the share of Dracocephalum nutans 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. 99 of 100 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 9 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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 2,014 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -29.7 °C -19.7 °C -15.8 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 17.8 °C 23.5 °C 25.1 °C
Annual rainfall 328 mm 484 mm 1,039 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 19 mm 61 mm 142 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 2,014 research-grade observations of Dracocephalum nutans 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 6 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.

  • Dracocephalum alpinum (Kar. & Kir.) Turcz.
  • Dracocephalum microphyllum Turcz.
  • Dracocephalum nutans subsp. subarctium Kuvaev
  • Dracocephalum nutans var. alpinum Kar. & Kir.
  • Ruyschiana nutans (L.) House
  • Zornia nutans (L.) Moench

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. 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.