Lathyrus aureus

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Lathyrus aureus, photographed by Алексей Ябс — fig. b Алексей Ябс, CC0 1.0 / obs. 142903640

Lathyrus aureus, photographed by Михаил Орлов — fig. c Михаил Орлов, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 75960726

Lathyrus aureus, photographed by Татьяна Максимова — fig. f Татьяна Максимова, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 159456127

Lathyrus aureus, photographed by Максим Шумских — fig. g Максим Шумских, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 83096027

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 9 botanical countries

Native distribution of Lathyrus aureus, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Bulgaria	BUL	EUROPE
Greece	GRC
Krym	KRY
Romania	ROM
Ukraine	UKR
Lebanon-Syria	LBS	ASIA-TEMPERATE
North Caucasus	NCS
Transcaucasus	TCS
Türkiye	TUR

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 310 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	-10.2 °C	-2.8 °C	-0.6 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	18.8 °C	23.7 °C	26.2 °C
Annual rainfall	634 mm	916 mm	1,699 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	137 mm	178 mm	338 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 310 research-grade observations of Lathyrus aureus 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 6 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.

Lathyrus laevigatus subsp. aureus (G.Lodd. ex Drapiez) Breistr.
Lathyrus luteus subsp. aureus (G.Lodd. ex Drapiez) Rech.f.
Orobus aureus G.Lodd. ex Drapiez
Orobus aureus Steven ex Fisch., C.A.Mey. & Trautv.
Orobus kolenatii K.Koch
Orobus orientalis Boiss.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
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.