Helianthemum salicifolium(L.) Mill.

willowleaf frostweed

WFO wfo-0000717719 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Helianthemum salicifolium, photographed by Christian Berg
fig. a Christian Berg, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-13 / obs. 198313430

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
04962008
Filed as
Helianthemum salicifolium var. salicifolium
Det. by
not recorded on this sheet
Collected
A. Faure 1921-04-10
Origin
DZ
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 38 botanical countries

Regions where Helianthemum salicifolium is native: Algeria, Canary Is., Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Cyprus, East Aegean Is., Gulf States, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon-Syria, North Caucasus, Oman, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Sinai, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, Turkmenistan, Albania, Baleares, Bulgaria, Corse, France, Greece, Italy, Kriti, Krym, NW. Balkan Pen., Portugal, Romania, Sardegna, Sicilia, Spain, Switzerland, Türkiye-in-Europe AlgeriaEgyptLibyaMoroccoTunisiaCyprusEast Aegean Is.Gulf StatesIranIraqKuwaitLebanon-SyriaNorth CaucasusOmanPalestineSaudi ArabiaSinaiTranscaucasusTürkiyeTurkmenistanAlbaniaBulgariaCorseFranceGreeceItalyKritiKrymNW. Balkan Pen.PortugalRomaniaSiciliaSpainSwitzerlandTürkiye-in-Europe Canary Is.BalearesSardegna
Native distribution of Helianthemum salicifolium, 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
Baleares BAL
Bulgaria BUL
Corse COR
France FRA
Greece GRC
Italy ITA
Kriti KRI
Krym KRY
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Portugal POR
Romania ROM
Sardegna SAR
Sicilia SIC
Spain SPA
Switzerland SWI
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
Cyprus CYP ASIA-TEMPERATE
East Aegean Is. EAI
Gulf States GST
Iran IRN
Iraq IRQ
Kuwait KUW
Lebanon-Syria LBS
North Caucasus NCS
Oman OMA
Palestine PAL
Saudi Arabia SAU
Sinai SIN
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR
Turkmenistan TKM
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Canary Is. CNY
Egypt EGY
Libya LBY
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 71 examined

Proportion of examined Helianthemum salicifolium in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 0 0 too few examined
Feb 3 7 43% 16% to 75%
Mar 18 23 78% 58% to 90%
Apr 24 28 86% 69% to 94%
May 7 8 88% 53% to 98%
Jun 1 4 too few examined
Jul 0 0 too few examined
Aug 0 0 too few examined
Sep 0 0 too few examined
Oct 0 0 too few examined
Nov 0 0 too few examined
Dec 0 1 too few examined

Peak flowering in May. Each bar is the share of Helianthemum salicifolium 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 71 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 670 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -3.0 °C 0.9 °C 9.0 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 24.4 °C 28.2 °C 33.0 °C
Annual rainfall 364 mm 595 mm 1,027 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 2 mm 75 mm 170 mm

It is found where winters bring light 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 670 research-grade observations of Helianthemum salicifolium 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 46 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.

  • Aphananthemum salicifolium (L.) Fourr.
  • Cistus denticulatus Kit. ex Kanitz
  • Cistus intermedius Poir.
  • Cistus salicifolius L.
  • Cistus salicifolius var. fugaceus (Mill.) Steud.
  • Helianthemum ambiguum Pomel
  • Helianthemum assurgens Dufr. ex Willk.
  • Helianthemum denticulatum Thibaud ex Pers.
  • Helianthemum fugaceum Mill.
  • Helianthemum fugax Dunal
  • Helianthemum intermedium Thibaud
  • Helianthemum intermedium subvar. micranthum Dufour ex Nyman
  • Helianthemum intermedium var. ambiguum Batt.
  • Helianthemum intermedium var. tribracteatum Pau
  • Helianthemum intermedium var. tribracteatum Sennen & Pau
  • Helianthemum ledifolium f. dissitiflorum Willk.
  • Helianthemum ledifolium var. micropetalum Coss. ex Willk.
  • Helianthemum ledifolium var. racemosum Willk.
  • Helianthemum micranthum Dufr. ex Nyman
  • Helianthemum minutum Schltdl. ex Willk.
  • Helianthemum punctatum Willd.
  • Helianthemum refractum Friv. ex Hampe
  • Helianthemum retrofractum Friv. ex Nyman
  • Helianthemum rubellum Moench

and 22 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.