Linum trigynumL.

French flax

WFO wfo-0000366373 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Linum trigynum, photographed by Emanuele Santarelli
fig. a Emanuele Santarelli, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-06-07 / obs. 205761461

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
Smithsonian, US National Herbarium
Accession
US 1579049
Filed as
Linum trigynum L.
Det. by
Shannon, R. K., (UNITED STATES)
Collected
C. N. Forbes 1912-04-26
Origin
US
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC0 1.0)

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 37 botanical countries

Regions where Linum trigynum is native: Algeria, Canary Is., Eritrea, Ethiopia, Libya, Madeira, Morocco, Socotra, Tunisia, Cyprus, East Aegean Is., Iraq, Lebanon-Syria, North Caucasus, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, Yemen, Albania, Baleares, Bulgaria, Corse, Czechia-Slovakia, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Kriti, NW. Balkan Pen., Portugal, Romania, Sardegna, Sicilia, Spain, Türkiye-in-Europe, Ukraine AlgeriaEritreaEthiopiaLibyaMoroccoTunisiaCyprusEast Aegean Is.IraqLebanon-SyriaNorth CaucasusPalestineSaudi ArabiaTranscaucasusTürkiyeYemenAlbaniaBulgariaCorseCzechia-SlovakiaFranceGreeceHungaryItalyKritiNW. Balkan Pen.PortugalRomaniaSiciliaSpainTürkiye-in-EuropeUkraine Canary Is.MadeiraBalearesSardegna
Native distribution of Linum trigynum, 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
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
France FRA
Greece GRC
Hungary HUN
Italy ITA
Kriti KRI
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Portugal POR
Romania ROM
Sardegna SAR
Sicilia SIC
Spain SPA
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
Ukraine UKR
Cyprus CYP ASIA-TEMPERATE
East Aegean Is. EAI
Iraq IRQ
Lebanon-Syria LBS
North Caucasus NCS
Palestine PAL
Saudi Arabia SAU
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR
Yemen YEM
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Canary Is. CNY
Eritrea ERI
Ethiopia ETH
Libya LBY
Madeira MDR
Morocco MOR
Socotra SOC
Tunisia TUN

Not drawn on the map: Socotra. 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 210 in flower of 220 examined

Proportion of examined Linum trigynum in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 25 26 96% 81% to 99%
Feb 8 8 100% 68% to 100%
Mar 14 14 100% 78% to 100%
Apr 15 16 94% 72% to 99%
May 33 34 97% 85% to 99%
Jun 23 23 100% 86% to 100%
Jul 4 4 too few examined
Aug 2 2 too few examined
Sep 9 9 100% 70% to 100%
Oct 13 15 87% 62% to 96%
Nov 33 36 92% 78% to 97%
Dec 31 33 94% 80% to 98%

Peak flowering in Feb. Each bar is the share of Linum trigynum 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. 210 of 220 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 2 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 745 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -0.3 °C 5.9 °C 11.4 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 20.6 °C 25.4 °C 30.6 °C
Annual rainfall 551 mm 873 mm 1,441 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 26 mm 137 mm 269 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 745 research-grade observations of Linum trigynum 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 15 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.

  • Cathartolinum gallicum (L.) Rchb.
  • Chrysolinum gallicum (L.) Fourr.
  • Linum aureum Waldst. & Kit.
  • Linum gallicum L.
  • Linum gallicum subvar. aureum (Waldst. & Kit.) Nyman
  • Linum gallicum var. abyssinicum Planch.
  • Linum gallicum var. aureum (Waldst. & Kit.) Nyman
  • Linum gallicum var. confertum R.Fern.
  • Linum gallicum var. medium DC.
  • Linum gallicum var. sieberi Planch.
  • Linum procumbens Gaterau
  • Linum strictissimum Pall.
  • Linum trigynum var. confertum (R.Fern.) P.Silva
  • Linum trigynum var. sieberi (Planch.) Cufod.
  • Numisaureum petiolatum Raf.

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.