Galega officinalisL.

Goat's rueprofessor-weed

WFO wfo-0000212597 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Galega officinalis, photographed by Pablo
fig. a Pablo, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-12 / obs. 205520378
Galega officinalis, photographed by Derek Winterburn
fig. b Derek Winterburn, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204964807
Galega officinalis, photographed by Daniel Cahen
fig. c Daniel Cahen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199768551
Galega officinalis, photographed by Daniel Cahen
fig. d Daniel Cahen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199788050
Galega officinalis, photographed by Chris Gannaway
fig. e Chris Gannaway, CC0 1.0 / obs. 196306028
Galega officinalis, photographed by Grey Smith
fig. f Grey Smith, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 185232922
Galega officinalis, photographed by Steven Bodzin
fig. g Steven Bodzin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 180641307
Galega officinalis, photographed by Leon Perrie
fig. h Leon Perrie, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 174195275

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 22 botanical countries

Regions where Galega officinalis is native: East Aegean Is., Iran, Lebanon-Syria, North Caucasus, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, Pakistan, Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Czechia-Slovakia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Krym, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Romania, South European Russia, Türkiye-in-Europe, Ukraine East Aegean Is.IranLebanon-SyriaNorth CaucasusTranscaucasusTürkiyePakistanAlbaniaAustriaBulgariaCzechia-SlovakiaGermanyGreeceHungaryItalyKrymNW. Balkan Pen.PolandRomaniaSouth European RussiaTürkiye-in-EuropeUkraine
Native distribution of Galega officinalis, 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
Bulgaria BUL
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
Germany GER
Greece GRC
Hungary HUN
Italy ITA
Krym KRY
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Romania ROM
South European Russia RUS
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
Ukraine UKR
East Aegean Is. EAI ASIA-TEMPERATE
Iran IRN
Lebanon-Syria LBS
North Caucasus NCS
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR
Pakistan PAK ASIA-TROPICAL

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 483 in flower of 539 examined

Peak flowering in Feb. Each bar is the share of Galega officinalis 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. 483 of 539 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 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 1,967 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -6.4 °C 1.5 °C 7.9 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 19.7 °C 23.5 °C 29.8 °C
Annual rainfall 552 mm 785 mm 1,401 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 14 mm 144 mm 235 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 1,967 research-grade observations of Galega officinalis 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 12 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.

  • Accorombona tricolor (Hook.) Benth. ex Walp.
  • Callotropis tricolor (Hook.) G.Don
  • Galega alba Schult.
  • Galega bicolor Boiss. & Hausskn.
  • Galega biloba Sweet
  • Galega coronilloides Freyn & Sint.
  • Galega officinalis var. albiflora Halácsy
  • Galega patula Steven
  • Galega persica Pers.
  • Galega tricolor Hook.
  • Galega vulgaris Lam.
  • Tephrosia tricolor (Hook.) Sweet

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.