Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations
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 12 botanical countries
| Region | TDWG code | Continent |
|---|---|---|
| Algeria | ALG | AFRICA |
| Canary Is. | CNY | |
| Libya | LBY | |
| Madeira | MDR | |
| Morocco | MOR | |
| Tunisia | TUN | |
| Western Sahara | WSA | |
| Baleares | BAL | EUROPE |
| Italy | ITA | |
| Portugal | POR | |
| Sicilia | SIC | |
| Spain | SPA |
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 589 observations
| Condition | 5th percentile | Median | 95th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coldest month, mean daily low | 1.0 °C | 9.5 °C | 12.2 °C |
| Warmest month, mean daily high | 24.7 °C | 26.8 °C | 32.5 °C |
| Annual rainfall | 285 mm | 530 mm | 831 mm |
| Rainfall in the driest quarter | 11 mm | 33 mm | 71 mm |
It is found where winters are cool but frost is light or absent. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 589 research-grade observations of Ephedra fragilis 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 Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.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 11 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.
- Ephedra altissima Buch
- Ephedra dissoluta Webb & Berthel.
- Ephedra fragilis f. disperma A.M.Hern.
- Ephedra fragilis subsp. desfontainii Asch. & Graebn.
- Ephedra fragilis subvar. cossonii Stapf
- Ephedra fragilis var. cossonii (Stapf) Trab.
- Ephedra fragilis var. dissoluta (Webb & Berthel.) Trab.
- Ephedra fragilis var. gibraltarica (Boiss.) Trab.
- Ephedra fragilis var. wettsteinii (Buxb.) Maire & Weiller
- Ephedra gibraltarica Boiss.
- Ephedra wettsteinii Buxb.
Sourcesevery claim on this page
- World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
- iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
- Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
- 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.