Mandragora officinarumL.

mandrake

WFO wfo-0001023507 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Mandragora officinarum, photographed by Mitch Van Dyke
fig. a Mitch Van Dyke, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-03-24 / obs. 185085107
Mandragora officinarum, photographed by Santiago Martín-Bravo
fig. b Santiago Martín-Bravo, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 166034349
Mandragora officinarum, photographed by Marc Riera
fig. c Marc Riera, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 163461577
Mandragora officinarum, photographed by Eleftherios Katsillis
fig. d Eleftherios Katsillis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 112691169
Mandragora officinarum, photographed by Eleftherios Katsillis
fig. e Eleftherios Katsillis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 112109206
Mandragora officinarum, photographed by Eleftherios Katsillis
fig. f Eleftherios Katsillis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 112042667
Mandragora officinarum, photographed by Eleftherios Katsillis
fig. g Eleftherios Katsillis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 110945399
Mandragora officinarum, photographed by Eleftherios Katsillis
fig. h Eleftherios Katsillis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 108687957

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 19 botanical countries

Regions where Mandragora officinarum is native: Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Cyprus, East Aegean Is., Iran, Lebanon-Syria, Palestine, Türkiye, Turkmenistan, Baleares, Greece, Italy, Kriti, NW. Balkan Pen., Portugal, Sardegna, Sicilia, Spain AlgeriaMoroccoTunisiaCyprusEast Aegean Is.IranLebanon-SyriaPalestineTürkiyeTurkmenistanGreeceItalyKritiNW. Balkan Pen.PortugalSiciliaSpain BalearesSardegna
Native distribution of Mandragora officinarum, 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
Baleares BAL EUROPE
Greece GRC
Italy ITA
Kriti KRI
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Portugal POR
Sardegna SAR
Sicilia SIC
Spain SPA
Cyprus CYP ASIA-TEMPERATE
East Aegean Is. EAI
Iran IRN
Lebanon-Syria LBS
Palestine PAL
Türkiye TUR
Turkmenistan TKM
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Morocco MOR
Tunisia TUN

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 203 in flower of 267 examined

Peak flowering in Sep. Each bar is the share of Mandragora officinarum 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. 203 of 267 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 4 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.

Also published as 14 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.

  • Atropa mandragora L.
  • Mandragora acaulis Gaertn.
  • Mandragora autumnalis Bertol.
  • Mandragora foemina Garsault
  • Mandragora haussknechtii Heldr.
  • Mandragora hispanica Vierh.
  • Mandragora hybrida Hausskn. & Heldr. ex Heldr.
  • Mandragora mas Garsault
  • Mandragora microcarpa Bertol.
  • Mandragora neglecta G.Don ex Loudon
  • Mandragora officinalis Moris
  • Mandragora praecox Sweet
  • Mandragora turcomanica Mizg.
  • Mandragora vernalis Bertol.

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.