Glycyrrhiza lepidotaPursh

American licoriceWild LicoriceWild licoricewild licorice

WFO wfo-0000170582 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Glycyrrhiza lepidota, photographed by Jay Pruett
fig. a Jay Pruett, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-10-29 / obs. 166381836

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
703941
Filed as
Glycyrrhiza lepidota var. glutinosa (Nutt.) S.Watson
Det. by
J. D. Morefield 1985-01-01
Collected
J. D. Morefield 1984-06-16
Origin
US
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 37 botanical countries

Regions where Glycyrrhiza lepidota is native: Alberta, Arizona, Arkansas, British Columbia, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Manitoba, Massachusetts, Mexico Northeast, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Ontario, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode I., Saskatchewan, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, Wyoming AlbertaArizonaArkansasBritish ColumbiaCaliforniaColoradoConnecticutIdahoIllinoisIndianaIowaKansasMaineManitobaMassachusettsMexico NortheastMinnesotaMissouriMontanaNebraskaNevadaNew MexicoNew YorkNorth DakotaOklahomaOntarioOregonPennsylvaniaSaskatchewanSouth DakotaTexasUtahVirginiaWashingtonWisconsinWyoming Rhode I.
Native distribution of Glycyrrhiza lepidota, 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
Alberta ABT NORTHERN AMERICA
Arizona ARI
Arkansas ARK
British Columbia BRC
California CAL
Colorado COL
Connecticut CNT
Idaho IDA
Illinois ILL
Indiana INI
Iowa IOW
Kansas KAN
Maine MAI
Manitoba MAN
Massachusetts MAS
Mexico Northeast MXE
Minnesota MIN
Missouri MSO
Montana MNT
Nebraska NEB
Nevada NEV
New Mexico NWM
New York NWY
North Dakota NDA
Oklahoma OKL
Ontario ONT
Oregon ORE
Pennsylvania PEN
Rhode I. RHO
Saskatchewan SAS
South Dakota SDA
Texas TEX
Utah UTA
Virginia VRG
Washington WAS
Wisconsin WIS
Wyoming WYO

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 612 in flower of 1,975 examined

Proportion of examined Glycyrrhiza lepidota in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 0 29 0% 0% to 12%
Feb 0 122 0% 0% to 3%
Mar 0 96 0% 0% to 4%
Apr 2 218 1% 0% to 3%
May 58 151 38% 31% to 46%
Jun 309 402 77% 73% to 81%
Jul 220 326 67% 62% to 72%
Aug 22 200 11% 7% to 16%
Sep 0 257 0% 0% to 1%
Oct 1 105 1% 0% to 5%
Nov 0 41 0% 0% to 9%
Dec 0 28 0% 0% to 12%

Peak flowering in Jun. Each bar is the share of Glycyrrhiza lepidota 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. 612 of 1,975 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.

When it blooms, where you are 2 states

StatePeaksObservations in flower
California May 73
Colorado Jun 89

Where it actually grows measured, from 2,013 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -20.1 °C -10.5 °C 1.8 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 23.3 °C 27.2 °C 33.1 °C
Annual rainfall 278 mm 443 mm 742 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 19 mm 45 mm 82 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 2,013 research-grade observations of Glycyrrhiza lepidota 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 3 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.

  • Glycyrrhiza glutinosa Nutt.
  • Glycyrrhiza lepidota var. glutinosa (Nutt.) S.Watson
  • Liquiritia lepidota Nutt.

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.