Gratiola officinalisL.

gratiolahedgehyssop

WFO wfo-0000708733 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Gratiola officinalis, photographed by Patrick Hacker
fig. a Patrick Hacker, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-04 / obs. 205156051

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
4761232
Filed as
Gratiola officinalis 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 40 botanical countries

Regions where Gratiola officinalis is native: Morocco, Altay, East Aegean Is., Iran, Kazakhstan, North Caucasus, Tadzhikistan, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, Uzbekistan, West Siberia, Xinjiang, Pakistan, Albania, Austria, Baltic States, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Central European Russia, Czechia-Slovakia, East European Russia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Krym, Netherlands, Northwest European Russia, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sardegna, South European Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Türkiye-in-Europe, Ukraine MoroccoAltayEast Aegean Is.IranKazakhstanNorth CaucasusTadzhikistanTranscaucasusTürkiyeUzbekistanWest SiberiaXinjiangPakistanAlbaniaAustriaBaltic StatesBelarusBelgiumBulgariaCentral European RussiaCzechia-SlovakiaEast European RussiaFranceGermanyGreeceHungaryItalyKrymNetherlandsNorthwest European RussiaNW. Balkan Pen.PolandPortugalRomaniaSouth European RussiaSpainSwitzerlandTürkiye-in-EuropeUkraine Sardegna
Native distribution of Gratiola 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. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Albania ALB EUROPE
Austria AUT
Baltic States BLT
Belarus BLR
Belgium BGM
Bulgaria BUL
Central European Russia RUC
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
East European Russia RUE
France FRA
Germany GER
Greece GRC
Hungary HUN
Italy ITA
Krym KRY
Netherlands NET
Northwest European Russia RUW
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Portugal POR
Romania ROM
Sardegna SAR
South European Russia RUS
Spain SPA
Switzerland SWI
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
Ukraine UKR
Altay ALT ASIA-TEMPERATE
East Aegean Is. EAI
Iran IRN
Kazakhstan KAZ
North Caucasus NCS
Tadzhikistan TZK
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR
Uzbekistan UZB
West Siberia WSB
Xinjiang CHX
Morocco MOR AFRICA
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 103 in flower of 116 examined

Proportion of examined Gratiola officinalis in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 0 0 too few examined
Feb 1 1 too few examined
Mar 0 0 too few examined
Apr 0 1 too few examined
May 11 13 85% 58% to 96%
Jun 41 42 98% 88% to 100%
Jul 27 28 96% 82% to 99%
Aug 11 15 73% 48% to 89%
Sep 11 15 73% 48% to 89%
Oct 1 1 too few examined
Nov 0 0 too few examined
Dec 0 0 too few examined

Peak flowering in Jun. Each bar is the share of Gratiola 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. 103 of 116 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 1,162 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -13.1 °C -4.0 °C 4.0 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 23.2 °C 25.9 °C 29.5 °C
Annual rainfall 440 mm 660 mm 1,649 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 68 mm 110 mm 253 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 1,162 research-grade observations of Gratiola 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 10 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 angustifolia Gilib.
  • Gratiola linifolia var. angustifolia (Lange) Franco
  • Gratiola linifolia var. broteri (Nyman)
  • Gratiola linifolia var. lusitanica Amo
  • Gratiola meonantha Samp.
  • Gratiola officinalis f. angustifolia (Lange) Cout.
  • Gratiola officinalis f. meonantha (Samp.) Cout.
  • Gratiola officinalis subsp. broteri Nyman
  • Gratiola officinalis var. angustifolia Lange
  • Gratiola officinalis var. catalaunica Sennen & Pau

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.