Gentiana pneumonantheL.

marsh gentian

WFO wfo-0000698269 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Gentiana pneumonanthe, photographed by Игорь Васильев
fig. a Игорь Васильев, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-09-18 / obs. 158203127

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.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
4365871
Filed as
Gentiana pneumonanthe L.
Det. by
not recorded on this sheet
Collected
not recorded
Origin
not recorded
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 34 botanical countries

Regions where Gentiana pneumonanthe is native: Altay, Kazakhstan, Krasnoyarsk, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, West Siberia, Albania, Austria, Baltic States, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Central European Russia, Czechia-Slovakia, Denmark, East European Russia, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, North European Russia, Northwest European Russia, Norway, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Portugal, Romania, South European Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine AltayKazakhstanKrasnoyarskTranscaucasusTürkiyeWest SiberiaAlbaniaAustriaBaltic StatesBelarusBelgiumBulgariaCentral European RussiaCzechia-SlovakiaDenmarkEast European RussiaFranceGermanyHungaryItalyNetherlandsNorth European RussiaNorthwest European RussiaNorwayNW. Balkan Pen.PolandPortugalRomaniaSouth European RussiaSpainSwedenSwitzerlandUkraine
Native distribution of Gentiana pneumonanthe, 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
Great Britain GRB
Hungary HUN
Italy ITA
Netherlands NET
North European Russia RUN
Northwest European Russia RUW
Norway NOR
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Portugal POR
Romania ROM
South European Russia RUS
Spain SPA
Sweden SWE
Switzerland SWI
Ukraine UKR
Altay ALT ASIA-TEMPERATE
Kazakhstan KAZ
Krasnoyarsk KRA
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR
West Siberia WSB

Not drawn on the map: Great Britain. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is listed rather than guessed at.

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 416 in flower of 438 examined

Proportion of examined Gentiana pneumonanthe in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 0 0 too few examined
Feb 0 0 too few examined
Mar 0 0 too few examined
Apr 0 0 too few examined
May 0 1 too few examined
Jun 5 6 83% 44% to 97%
Jul 97 104 93% 87% to 97%
Aug 208 214 97% 94% to 99%
Sep 85 90 94% 88% to 98%
Oct 19 21 90% 71% to 97%
Nov 1 1 too few examined
Dec 1 1 too few examined

Peak flowering in Aug. Each bar is the share of Gentiana pneumonanthe 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. 416 of 438 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 7 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 1,970 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -19.5 °C -4.4 °C 3.4 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 17.9 °C 22.6 °C 25.8 °C
Annual rainfall 466 mm 790 mm 1,784 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 57 mm 133 mm 296 mm

It is found where winters are severely cold. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,970 research-grade observations of Gentiana pneumonanthe 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 36 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.

  • Ciminalis pneumonanthe Borkh.
  • Ciminalis pseudopneumonanthe Bercht. & J.Presl
  • Ciminalis vulgaris Bercht. & J.Presl
  • Dasystephana pneumonanthe (L.) J.Sojak
  • Dasystephana pneumonanthe (L.) Zuev
  • Gentiana adrianii Sennen & Elías
  • Gentiana eonae Halda
  • Gentiana linearifolia Lam.
  • Gentiana linifolia Salisb.
  • Gentiana macrocarpophora St.-Lag.
  • Gentiana manginii Sennen
  • Gentiana nopcsae Jáv.
  • Gentiana palustris St.-Lag.
  • Gentiana pneumonanthe f. diffusa (Griseb.) Bolzon
  • Gentiana pneumonanthe subsp. depressa (Boiss.) Rivas Mart. & al.
  • Gentiana pneumonanthe subsp. depressa (Boiss.) Malag.
  • Gentiana pneumonanthe subsp. nopcsae (Jáv.) Wraber
  • Gentiana pneumonanthe var. aloyana Merino
  • Gentiana pneumonanthe var. boryana Webb
  • Gentiana pneumonanthe var. depressa Boiss.
  • Gentiana pneumonanthe var. diffusa Griseb.
  • Gentiana pneumonanthe var. elliptica Klett & Richt.
  • Gentiana pneumonanthe var. humilior Roth
  • Gentiana pneumonanthe var. latifolia Lecoq & Lamotte

and 12 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.