Hieracium alpinumL.

alpine hawkweed

WFO wfo-0000072634 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Hieracium alpinum, photographed by Jens-Christian Svenning
fig. a Jens-Christian Svenning, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-07-21 / obs. 145233605

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
2908022
Filed as
Hieracium alpinum L.
Det. by
not recorded on this sheet
Collected
R. J. Shaw 1984-07-28
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 20 botanical countries

Regions where Hieracium alpinum is native: Kirgizstan, West Siberia, Austria, Belarus, Czechia-Slovakia, East European Russia, France, Germany, Great Britain, Iceland, Italy, North European Russia, Norway, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, Greenland KirgizstanWest SiberiaAustriaBelarusCzechia-SlovakiaEast European RussiaFranceGermanyIcelandItalyNorth European RussiaNorwayNW. Balkan Pen.PolandRomaniaSwedenSwitzerlandUkraineGreenland
Native distribution of Hieracium alpinum, 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
Austria AUT EUROPE
Belarus BLR
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
East European Russia RUE
France FRA
Germany GER
Great Britain GRB
Iceland ICE
Italy ITA
North European Russia RUN
Norway NOR
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Romania ROM
Sweden SWE
Switzerland SWI
Ukraine UKR
Kirgizstan KGZ ASIA-TEMPERATE
West Siberia WSB
Greenland GNL NORTHERN AMERICA

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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 390 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -23.8 °C -14.5 °C -8.6 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 9.8 °C 13.5 °C 16.1 °C
Annual rainfall 737 mm 1,262 mm 2,091 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 114 mm 194 mm 320 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 390 research-grade observations of Hieracium alpinum 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.

Also published as 19 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.

  • Hieracium alpinum subsp. anzascae
  • Hieracium alpinum subsp. eupseudofritzei
  • Hieracium alpinum subsp. glandulicaule
  • Hieracium alpinum subsp. halleriforme Chiarugi
  • Hieracium alpinum subsp. payotii Zahn
  • Hieracium alpinum var. tubulosum Tausch
  • Hieracium angmagssalikense Omang
  • Hieracium augusti-bayeri (Zlatník) Chrtek f.
  • Hieracium crispum Elfstr.
  • Hieracium eximiiforme (Dahlst.) Dahlst.
  • Hieracium gymnogenum (Zahn) Üksip
  • Hieracium halleri Vill.
  • Hieracium melanocephalum Tausch
  • Hieracium nigrescens subsp. eximiiforme (Dahlst.) Zahn
  • Hieracium nigrescens subsp. pseudofritzei (Benz & Zahn) Zahn
  • Hieracium pumilum Hoppe ex Willd.
  • Hieracium sudetotubulosum Szeląg
  • Hieracium trigonophorum Ósk.
  • Hieracium tubulosum (Tausch) Tausch

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.