Galium lucidumAll.

WFO wfo-0000969381 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 7 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 7 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.

Galium lucidum, photographed by Mehdi Chetibi
fig. a Mehdi Chetibi, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-05-26 / obs. 131834026

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 20 botanical countries

Regions where Galium lucidum is native: Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Albania, Austria, Baleares, Bulgaria, Corse, Czechia-Slovakia, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, NW. Balkan Pen., Portugal, Romania, Sardegna, Sicilia, Spain, Switzerland AlgeriaMoroccoTunisiaAlbaniaAustriaBulgariaCorseCzechia-SlovakiaFranceGermanyHungaryItalyNW. Balkan Pen.PortugalRomaniaSiciliaSpainSwitzerland BalearesSardegna
Native distribution of Galium lucidum, 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.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Albania ALB EUROPE
Austria AUT
Baleares BAL
Bulgaria BUL
Corse COR
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
France FRA
Germany GER
Hungary HUN
Italy ITA
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Portugal POR
Romania ROM
Sardegna SAR
Sicilia SIC
Spain SPA
Switzerland SWI
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Morocco MOR
Tunisia TUN

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 53 in flower of 56 examined

Proportion of examined Galium lucidum in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 1 1 too few examined
Feb 0 0 too few examined
Mar 0 1 too few examined
Apr 6 7 86% 49% to 97%
May 22 23 96% 79% to 99%
Jun 13 13 100% 77% to 100%
Jul 5 5 100% 57% to 100%
Aug 3 3 too few examined
Sep 0 0 too few examined
Oct 2 2 too few examined
Nov 1 1 too few examined
Dec 0 0 too few examined

Peak flowering in Jun. Each bar is the share of Galium lucidum 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. 53 of 56 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 8 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 292 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -8.5 °C -1.1 °C 6.6 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 19.5 °C 26.2 °C 29.1 °C
Annual rainfall 546 mm 954 mm 1,768 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 51 mm 146 mm 262 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 292 research-grade observations of Galium lucidum 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 66 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.

  • Galium abruptorum Pomel
  • Galium aciphyllum Willk. & Costa
  • Galium aciphyllum var. caespitosum Willk. & Costa
  • Galium aciphyllum var. longicaule Willk. & Costa
  • Galium adriaticum Ronniger
  • Galium affine Schult. & Schult.f.
  • Galium atlanticum Pomel
  • Galium bermudianum L.
  • Galium bernardii Gren.
  • Galium betetae Caball.
  • Galium cinereum var. tenuifolium (All.) DC.
  • Galium corrudaefolium Vill.
  • Galium corrudifolium Vill.
  • Galium corrudifolium subsp. falcatum (Willk. & Costa) Franco
  • Galium corrudifolium var. falcatum Willk. & Costa
  • Galium corrudifolium var. mauritii Sennen
  • Galium erectum f. falcatum (Willk. & Costa) Cout.
  • Galium erectum var. lucidum (All.) DC.
  • Galium erectum var. prostratum Boiss.
  • Galium erectum var. rigidum (Vill.) Gren.
  • Galium ericoides Arv.-Touv.
  • Galium errans Sennen
  • Galium foliosum Munby ex Burnat & Barbey
  • Galium fontanesianum Pomel

and 42 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. 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.