Lathyrus saxatilis(Vent.) Vis.

WFO wfo-0000212704 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 1 observation

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 1 time, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Lathyrus saxatilis, photographed by Eleftherios Katsillis
fig. a Eleftherios Katsillis, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-04-21 / obs. 189801888
Lathyrus saxatilis, photographed by Eleftherios Katsillis
fig. b Eleftherios Katsillis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 189801861
Lathyrus saxatilis, photographed by Eleftherios Katsillis
fig. c Eleftherios Katsillis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 189801844
Lathyrus saxatilis, photographed by Eleftherios Katsillis
fig. d Eleftherios Katsillis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 189801829
Lathyrus saxatilis, photographed by Eleftherios Katsillis
fig. e Eleftherios Katsillis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 189801805
Lathyrus saxatilis, photographed by Eleftherios Katsillis
fig. f Eleftherios Katsillis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 189801939
Lathyrus saxatilis, photographed by Eleftherios Katsillis
fig. g Eleftherios Katsillis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 189801921
Lathyrus saxatilis, photographed by Eleftherios Katsillis
fig. h Eleftherios Katsillis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 189801902

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 Lathyrus saxatilis is native: Algeria, Libya, Cyprus, East Aegean Is., Lebanon-Syria, Palestine, Türkiye, Albania, Baleares, Bulgaria, Corse, France, Greece, Italy, Kriti, Krym, NW. Balkan Pen., Spain AlgeriaLibyaCyprusEast Aegean Is.Lebanon-SyriaPalestineTürkiyeAlbaniaBulgariaCorseFranceGreeceItalyKritiKrymNW. Balkan Pen.Spain Baleares
Native distribution of Lathyrus saxatilis, 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
Spain SPA
Cyprus CYP ASIA-TEMPERATE
East Aegean Is. EAI
Lebanon-Syria LBS
Palestine PAL
Türkiye TUR
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Libya LBY

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 44 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -1.9 °C 4.3 °C 11.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 24.1 °C 25.8 °C 32.2 °C
Annual rainfall 563 mm 746 mm 1,005 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 2 mm 77 mm 188 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 44 research-grade observations of Lathyrus saxatilis 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 8 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 aristatus Vis.
  • Lathyrus ciliatus Guss.
  • Menkenia saxatilis (Vent.) Bubani
  • Orobus ciliatus Alef.
  • Orobus saxatilis Vent.
  • Orobus tricuspidata (Steven) Janka
  • Vicia saxatilis (Vent.) Tropea
  • Vicia tricuspidata Steven

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. 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.