Gagea pratensis(Pers.) Dumort.

meadow gagea

WFO wfo-0000768612 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Gagea pratensis, photographed by Dmitry Semigradsky
fig. a Dmitry Semigradsky, CC0 1.0 / 2022-04-30 / obs. 192149755

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 28 botanical countries

Regions where Gagea pratensis is native: Morocco, Türkiye, Albania, Austria, Baltic States, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Central European Russia, Czechia-Slovakia, Denmark, East European Russia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Krym, Netherlands, Northwest European Russia, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Romania, Sicilia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine MoroccoTürkiyeAlbaniaAustriaBaltic StatesBelarusBelgiumBulgariaCentral European RussiaCzechia-SlovakiaDenmarkEast European RussiaFranceGermanyGreeceHungaryItalyKrymNetherlandsNorthwest European RussiaNW. Balkan Pen.PolandRomaniaSiciliaSpainSwedenSwitzerlandUkraine
Native distribution of Gagea pratensis, 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
Albania ALB EUROPE
Austria AUT
Baltic States BLT
Belarus BLR
Belgium BGM
Bulgaria BUL
Central European Russia RUC
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
Denmark DEN
East European Russia RUE
France FRA
Germany GER
Greece GRC
Hungary HUN
Italy ITA
Krym KRY
Netherlands NET
Northwest European Russia RUW
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Romania ROM
Sicilia SIC
Spain SPA
Sweden SWE
Switzerland SWI
Ukraine UKR
Morocco MOR AFRICA
Türkiye TUR 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.

Flowering 195 in flower of 200 examined

Proportion of examined Gagea pratensis in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 0 0 too few examined
Feb 1 2 too few examined
Mar 108 110 98% 94% to 100%
Apr 84 86 98% 92% to 99%
May 2 2 too few examined
Jun 0 0 too few examined
Jul 0 0 too few examined
Aug 0 0 too few examined
Sep 0 0 too few examined
Oct 0 0 too few examined
Nov 0 0 too few examined
Dec 0 0 too few examined

Peak flowering in Mar. Each bar is the share of Gagea pratensis 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. 195 of 200 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 10 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 1,212 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -5.4 °C -3.6 °C -0.8 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 21.5 °C 23.3 °C 26.2 °C
Annual rainfall 533 mm 654 mm 962 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 84 mm 120 mm 180 mm

It is found where winters bring hard frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,212 research-grade observations of Gagea pratensis 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 42 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.

  • Gagea bracteolaris Salisb.
  • Gagea composita Opiz
  • Gagea equitans Wallr.
  • Gagea gussonei Terracc.
  • Gagea gussonei (A.Terracc.) Stroh
  • Gagea lutea subsp. stenopetala (Fr.) Bonnier & Layens
  • Gagea nova Samp.
  • Gagea polymorpha F.W.Schultz
  • Gagea pratensis f. angustifolia (Peterm.) Soó
  • Gagea pratensis f. exscapa (Peterm.) Soó
  • Gagea pratensis f. grandiflora (Mert. & W.D.J.Koch) Soó
  • Gagea pratensis f. stenopetala (Fr.) Neuman
  • Gagea pratensis subsp. gussonei A.Terracc.
  • Gagea pratensis subsp. nova (Samp.) Samp.
  • Gagea pratensis subsp. stenopetala (Fr.) P.Fourn.
  • Gagea pratensis subsp. stenopetala (Fr.) Lindm.
  • Gagea pratensis subsp. stenopetala (Fr.) O.Schwarz
  • Gagea pratensis var. grandiflora (Mert. & W.D.J.Koch) Schult. & Schult.f.
  • Gagea pratensis var. sicula Parl.
  • Gagea schreberi Rchb.
  • Gagea stenopetala (Fr.) Rchb.
  • Gagea stenopetala f. acaulis Westerl.
  • Gagea stenopetala f. angustifolia Peterm.
  • Gagea stenopetala f. exscapa Peterm.

and 18 more.

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.