Erinus alpinus (alpine balsam)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Erinus alpinus, photographed by Jochen Essig — fig. a Jochen Essig, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-08 / obs. 204829301

Erinus alpinus, photographed by Jason Grant — fig. b Jason Grant, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202771101

Erinus alpinus, photographed by Yves Bas — fig. c Yves Bas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201790134

Erinus alpinus, photographed by Attila Oláh — fig. d Attila Oláh, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201192967

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 8 botanical countries

Native distribution of Erinus alpinus, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Austria	AUT	EUROPE
Baleares	BAL
France	FRA
Italy	ITA
Sardegna	SAR
Switzerland	SWI
Algeria	ALG	AFRICA
Morocco	MOR

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 595 in flower of 625 examined

50%

83%

98%

100%

96%

69%

62%

89%

80%

Proportion of examined Erinus alpinus in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	3	6	50%	19% to 81%
Feb	1	2	too few examined
Mar	10	12	83%	55% to 95%
Apr	47	48	98%	89% to 100%
May	236	242	98%	95% to 99%
Jun	184	184	100%	98% to 100%
Jul	74	77	96%	89% to 99%
Aug	9	13	69%	42% to 87%
Sep	8	13	62%	36% to 82%
Oct	17	19	89%	69% to 97%
Nov	4	5	80%	38% to 96%
Dec	2	4	too few examined

Peak flowering in Jun. Each bar is the share of Erinus alpinus 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. 595 of 625 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 2 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.

Also published as 22 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.

Dortiguea alpestris Bubani
Erinus alpinus f. verus Pau
Erinus alpinus subsp. hispanicus (Pers.) Pau
Erinus alpinus var. atlanticus Batt.
Erinus alpinus var. glaberrimus Font Quer & Maire
Erinus alpinus var. glabratus Lange
Erinus alpinus var. gracilis Vayr.
Erinus alpinus var. hirsutus DC.
Erinus alpinus var. hispanicus (Pers.) Pau
Erinus alpinus var. laxiflorus Willk.
Erinus alpinus var. macranthus Pau & Font Quer
Erinus alpinus var. occidentalis Pau ex Cámara
Erinus alpinus var. orientalis Pau
Erinus alpinus var. parviflorus Pau
Erinus alpinus var. rotundifolius Pau
Erinus alpinus var. secundiflorus DC.
Erinus alpinus var. typicus Lange
Erinus alpinus var. villosus Lange
Erinus europaeus Panz.
Erinus glabratus Nyman
Erinus hispanicus Pers.
Erinus lanceolatus Kitt.

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.