Launaea nudicaulis(L.) Hook.f.

WFO wfo-0000026452 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 6 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 6 times, 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.

Launaea nudicaulis, photographed by John Lyden
fig. a John Lyden, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-02-16 / obs. 179654757
Launaea nudicaulis, photographed by Jacky Judas
fig. b Jacky Judas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 87072151
Launaea nudicaulis, photographed by John Lyden
fig. c John Lyden, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 179656352
Launaea nudicaulis, photographed by Denys Vynokurov
fig. d Denys Vynokurov, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 173586636
Launaea nudicaulis, photographed by Jacky Judas
fig. e Jacky Judas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 94418726
Launaea nudicaulis, photographed by Peter Gabler
fig. f Peter Gabler, CC0 1.0 / obs. 61725598
Launaea nudicaulis, photographed by Karim Haddad
fig. g Karim Haddad, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 40224427
Launaea nudicaulis, photographed by Denys Vynokurov
fig. h Denys Vynokurov, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 173586644

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
5018670
Filed as
Launaea nudicaulis Less.
Det. by
not recorded on this sheet
Collected
R. T. Lowe 1864-03-26
Origin
not recorded
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 24 botanical countries

Regions where Launaea nudicaulis is native: Algeria, Benin, Canary Is., Chad, Egypt, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Sudan-South Sudan, Tunisia, Afghanistan, Gulf States, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon-Syria, Oman, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Sinai, Yemen, India, Sicilia, Spain AlgeriaBeninChadEgyptLibyaMauritaniaMoroccoSudan-South SudanTunisiaAfghanistanGulf StatesIranIraqKuwaitLebanon-SyriaOmanPalestineSaudi ArabiaSinaiYemenIndiaSiciliaSpain Canary Is.
Native distribution of Launaea nudicaulis, 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
Afghanistan AFG ASIA-TEMPERATE
Gulf States GST
Iran IRN
Iraq IRQ
Kuwait KUW
Lebanon-Syria LBS
Oman OMA
Palestine PAL
Saudi Arabia SAU
Sinai SIN
Yemen YEM
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Benin BEN
Canary Is. CNY
Chad CHA
Egypt EGY
Libya LBY
Mauritania MTN
Morocco MOR
Sudan-South Sudan SUD
Tunisia TUN
Sicilia SIC EUROPE
Spain SPA
India IND ASIA-TROPICAL

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 257 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 2.0 °C 12.4 °C 16.5 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 22.6 °C 33.9 °C 42.1 °C
Annual rainfall 43 mm 169 mm 903 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 0 mm 3 mm 30 mm

It is found where winters are cool but frost is light or absent. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 257 research-grade observations of Launaea nudicaulis 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 24 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.

  • Ammoseris nudicaulis (L.) D.Dietr.
  • Atalanthus divaricatus Pomel
  • Chondrilla nudicaulis L.
  • Lactuca nudicaulis (L.) Murray
  • Lactuca nudicaulis var. nudicaulis
  • Launaea divaricata (Desf.) Vierh.
  • Launaea divaricata (Desf.) Andreanszky
  • Launaea nudicaulis var. foliosa Maire
  • Launaea nudicaulis var. intricata Batt.
  • Launaea nudicaulis var. nudicaulis
  • Microrhynchus nudicaulis var. divaricatus (Desf.) DC.
  • Microrhynchus nudicaulis var. nudicaulis
  • Prenanthes runcinata Lag.
  • Rhabdotheca chondrilloides Webb
  • Rhabdotheca divaricata (Desf.) Webb
  • Rhabdotheca divaricata (Pomel) Pomel
  • Rhabdotheca divaricata var. subnudicaulis Bolle
  • Rhabdotheca nudicaulis (L.) Pomel
  • Scorzonera ciliata Forssk.
  • Sonchus divaricatus Desf.
  • Sonchus reflexus Lag.
  • Zollikoferia nudicaulis (L.) Boiss.
  • Zollikoferia nudicaulis var. divaricata (Pomel) Batt.
  • Zollikoferia nudicaulis var. nudicaulis

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.