Hippocrepis comosaL.

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WFO wfo-0000213796 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Hippocrepis comosa, photographed by Elias
fig. a Elias, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-11 / obs. 205193830
Hippocrepis comosa, photographed by John Kenrick Gibson
fig. b John Kenrick Gibson, CC0 1.0 / obs. 205390777
Hippocrepis comosa, photographed by Chiara Catalano
fig. c Chiara Catalano, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 204077117
Hippocrepis comosa, photographed by Jason Grant
fig. d Jason Grant, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202771952
Hippocrepis comosa, photographed by Marco Mussita
fig. e Marco Mussita, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202929679
Hippocrepis comosa, photographed by Tobias Schönberg
fig. f Tobias Schönberg, CC0 1.0 / obs. 201327490
Hippocrepis comosa, photographed by saydelah
fig. g saydelah, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201545152
Hippocrepis comosa, photographed by Yves Bas
fig. h Yves Bas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201659042

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 18 botanical countries

Regions where Hippocrepis comosa is native: Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechia-Slovakia, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Krym, NW. Balkan Pen., Romania, Sardegna, Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine AlbaniaAustriaBelgiumBulgariaCzechia-SlovakiaFranceGermanyGreeceHungaryItalyKrymNW. Balkan Pen.RomaniaSpainSwitzerlandUkraine Sardegna
Native distribution of Hippocrepis comosa, 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
Belgium BGM
Bulgaria BUL
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
France FRA
Germany GER
Great Britain GRB
Greece GRC
Hungary HUN
Italy ITA
Krym KRY
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Romania ROM
Sardegna SAR
Spain SPA
Switzerland SWI
Ukraine UKR

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.

Flowering 482 in flower of 506 examined

Peak flowering in Oct. Each bar is the share of Hippocrepis comosa 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. 482 of 506 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 4 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.

Also published as 22 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.

  • Coronilla comosa (L.) Prantl
  • Hippocrepis alpestris Arv.-Touv.
  • Hippocrepis atlantica Durieu ex Munby
  • Hippocrepis burgalensis Sennen
  • Hippocrepis comosa prol. prostrata (Boiss.) Rouy
  • Hippocrepis comosa subsp. macedonica (Degen & Urum.) Kožuharov
  • Hippocrepis comosa subvar. microphylla Rouy
  • Hippocrepis comosa var. alpestris (Arv.-Touv.) Rouy
  • Hippocrepis comosa var. alpina Rouy
  • Hippocrepis comosa var. broteana Hrabětová
  • Hippocrepis comosa var. burgalensis (Sennen) Hrabětová
  • Hippocrepis comosa var. lignescens Hrabětová
  • Hippocrepis comosa var. macedonica Degen & Urum.
  • Hippocrepis comosa var. major Rouy
  • Hippocrepis comosa var. prostrata Boiss.
  • Hippocrepis comosa var. rolandi (Sennen) Hrabětová
  • Hippocrepis helvetica G.Don
  • Hippocrepis heterocarpa Sennen
  • Hippocrepis montgronyana Sennen & Pau
  • Hippocrepis perennis Lam.
  • Hippocrepis rolandi Sennen
  • Hippocrepis rolandi var. macrocarpa Sennen

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.