Gratiola luteaRaf.

golden hedgehyssop

WFO wfo-0000708709 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Gratiola lutea, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. a Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / 2021-08-08 / obs. 149477798
Gratiola lutea, photographed by Tom Rogers
fig. b Tom Rogers, CC0 1.0 / obs. 147922323
Gratiola lutea, photographed by Ian Manning
fig. c Ian Manning, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 144469697
Gratiola lutea, photographed by Ian Manning
fig. d Ian Manning, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 139746497
Gratiola lutea, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. e Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 103780957
Gratiola lutea, photographed by John Baur
fig. f John Baur, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 86397744
Gratiola lutea, photographed by Desiree L. Narango
fig. g Desiree L. Narango, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 87058358
Gratiola lutea, photographed by Peter Jacobson
fig. h Peter Jacobson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 83759213

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 25 botanical countries

Regions where Gratiola lutea is native: Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Brunswick, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Pennsylvania, Québec, Rhode I., South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia, Wisconsin ConnecticutFloridaGeorgiaIllinoisMaineMarylandMassachusettsMichiganNew BrunswickNew HampshireNew JerseyNew YorkNorth CarolinaNorth DakotaNova ScotiaOntarioPennsylvaniaQuébecSouth CarolinaVermontVirginiaWisconsin DelawareDistrict of ColumbiaRhode I.
Native distribution of Gratiola lutea, 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
Connecticut CNT NORTHERN AMERICA
Delaware DEL
District of Columbia WDC
Florida FLA
Georgia GEO
Illinois ILL
Maine MAI
Maryland MRY
Massachusetts MAS
Michigan MIC
New Brunswick NBR
New Hampshire NWH
New Jersey NWJ
New York NWY
North Carolina NCA
North Dakota NDA
Nova Scotia NSC
Ontario ONT
Pennsylvania PEN
Québec QUE
Rhode I. RHO
South Carolina SCA
Vermont VER
Virginia VRG
Wisconsin WIS

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 161 in flower of 169 examined

Peak flowering in Jul. Each bar is the share of Gratiola lutea 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. 161 of 169 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 911 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -14.2 °C -5.9 °C -0.9 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 20.5 °C 25.3 °C 28.8 °C
Annual rainfall 893 mm 1,243 mm 1,549 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 165 mm 283 mm 326 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 911 research-grade observations of Gratiola lutea 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 8 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.

  • Gratiola aurea Pursh
  • Gratiola aurea f. aurea
  • Gratiola aurea f. helveola Bartlett
  • Gratiola aurea f. leucantha Bartlett
  • Gratiola aurea f. pusilla Fassett
  • Gratiola aurea var. obtusa Pennell
  • Gratiola lutea f. pusilla Pennell
  • Gratiola lutea var. obtusa Pennell

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. USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol GRAU. public domain. 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.