Linum austriacumL.

Asian flax

WFO wfo-0000363520 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Linum austriacum, photographed by Michael Knapp
fig. a Michael Knapp, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-10 / obs. 196716877

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
1041042
Filed as
Linum austriacum L.
Det. by
N. Lachashvili
Collected
N. Lachashvili 2006-05-13
Origin
GE
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 23 botanical countries

Regions where Linum austriacum is native: Algeria, Morocco, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, North Caucasus, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Czechia-Slovakia, East European Russia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Krym, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, South European Russia, Switzerland, Türkiye-in-Europe, Ukraine AlgeriaMoroccoIranIraqKazakhstanNorth CaucasusTranscaucasusTürkiyeAlbaniaAustriaBulgariaCzechia-SlovakiaEast European RussiaGermanyGreeceHungaryKrymNW. Balkan Pen.PolandSouth European RussiaSwitzerlandTürkiye-in-EuropeUkraine
Native distribution of Linum austriacum, 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
Albania ALB EUROPE
Austria AUT
Bulgaria BUL
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
East European Russia RUE
Germany GER
Greece GRC
Hungary HUN
Krym KRY
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
South European Russia RUS
Switzerland SWI
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
Ukraine UKR
Iran IRN ASIA-TEMPERATE
Iraq IRQ
Kazakhstan KAZ
North Caucasus NCS
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Morocco MOR

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 200 in flower of 209 examined

Proportion of examined Linum austriacum in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 0 2 too few examined
Feb 0 0 too few examined
Mar 3 3 too few examined
Apr 37 40 93% 80% to 97%
May 86 87 99% 94% to 100%
Jun 35 37 95% 82% to 99%
Jul 11 11 100% 74% to 100%
Aug 11 11 100% 74% to 100%
Sep 9 9 100% 70% to 100%
Oct 4 5 80% 38% to 96%
Nov 4 4 too few examined
Dec 0 0 too few examined

Peak flowering in Jul. Each bar is the share of Linum austriacum 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. 200 of 209 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 5 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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 1,670 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -7.5 °C -3.5 °C 0.9 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 22.6 °C 25.9 °C 29.4 °C
Annual rainfall 419 mm 611 mm 906 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 75 mm 101 mm 176 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 1,670 research-grade observations of Linum austriacum 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. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 26 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.

  • Adenolinum austriacum (L.) Rchb.
  • Adenolinum barbatulum Lang ex Rchb.
  • Adenolinum barbulatum Schur
  • Adenolinum marginatum Rchb.
  • Linum alpinum Pall.
  • Linum alpinum prol. saxicola (Jord.) Rouy
  • Linum alpinum subsp. austriacum (L.) Bonnier & Layens
  • Linum alpinum subvar. minor Rouy
  • Linum alpinum var. crystallinum Gren. & Godr.
  • Linum alpinum var. glaucescens Boiss.
  • Linum alpinum var. saxicola (Jord.) P.Fourn.
  • Linum angustifolium G.Lodd.
  • Linum austriacum subvar. alboviolaceum Maire
  • Linum austriacum var. crystallinum (Gren. & Godr.) P.Fourn.
  • Linum austriacum var. glaucescens (Boiss.) P.H.Davis
  • Linum austriacum var. saxicola (Jord.) Nyman
  • Linum barbulatum Lange ex Rchb.
  • Linum glaucum Boiss. & Noë
  • Linum marginatum Rchb.
  • Linum marschallianum Juz.
  • Linum perenne subsp. austriacum (L.) O.Bolòs & Vigo
  • Linum perenne var. austriacum (L.) Schiede
  • Linum saxicola Jord.
  • Linum squamatum Herb. ex Steud.

and 2 more.

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.