Ferula assa-foetidaL.

Asafoetida

WFO wfo-0000686458 Accepted WFO 2026-06 5 photographs CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–e · 3 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 3 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.

Ferula assa-foetida, photographed by Kudaibergen Amirekul
fig. a Kudaibergen Amirekul, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2021-04-27 / obs. 123408021
Ferula assa-foetida, photographed by Kudaibergen Amirekul
fig. b Kudaibergen Amirekul, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 123408042
Ferula assa-foetida, photographed by Kudaibergen Amirekul
fig. c Kudaibergen Amirekul, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 123408394
Ferula assa-foetida, photographed by Kudaibergen Amirekul
fig. d Kudaibergen Amirekul, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 123408593
Ferula assa-foetida, photographed by Kudaibergen Amirekul
fig. e Kudaibergen Amirekul, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 123408375

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 1 botanical country

Regions where Ferula assa-foetida is native: Iran Iran
Native distribution of Ferula assa-foetida, 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
Iran IRN ASIA-TEMPERATE

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.

Also published as 8 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.

  • Ferula foetida St.-Lag.
  • Ferula hooshee Lindl.
  • Narthex assafoetida (L.) Falc.
  • Narthex polakii Stapf
  • Narthex silphium Oerst.
  • Peucedanum asa-foetida Baill.
  • Peucedanum hooshe Baill.
  • Scorodosma assa-foetida (L.) H.Karst.

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.