Melampyrum pratenseL.

common cow-wheat

WFO wfo-0001136626 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Melampyrum pratense, photographed by Anne Thomson
fig. a Anne Thomson, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-14 / obs. 206028553

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 33 botanical countries

Regions where Melampyrum pratense is native: Krasnoyarsk, West Siberia, Austria, Baltic States, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Central European Russia, Czechia-Slovakia, Denmark, East European Russia, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Krym, Netherlands, North European Russia, Northwest European Russia, Norway, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Portugal, Romania, South European Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Türkiye-in-Europe, Ukraine KrasnoyarskWest SiberiaAustriaBaltic StatesBelarusBelgiumBulgariaCentral European RussiaCzechia-SlovakiaDenmarkEast European RussiaFinlandFranceGermanyHungaryIrelandItalyKrymNetherlandsNorth European RussiaNorthwest European RussiaNorwayNW. Balkan Pen.PolandPortugalRomaniaSouth European RussiaSpainSwedenSwitzerlandTürkiye-in-EuropeUkraine
Native distribution of Melampyrum pratense, 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
Austria AUT EUROPE
Baltic States BLT
Belarus BLR
Belgium BGM
Bulgaria BUL
Central European Russia RUC
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
Denmark DEN
East European Russia RUE
Finland FIN
France FRA
Germany GER
Great Britain GRB
Hungary HUN
Ireland IRE
Italy ITA
Krym KRY
Netherlands NET
North European Russia RUN
Northwest European Russia RUW
Norway NOR
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Portugal POR
Romania ROM
South European Russia RUS
Spain SPA
Sweden SWE
Switzerland SWI
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
Ukraine UKR
Krasnoyarsk KRA ASIA-TEMPERATE
West Siberia WSB

Not drawn on the map: Great Britain. 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 1,390 in flower of 1,429 examined

Proportion of examined Melampyrum pratense in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 2 2 too few examined
Feb 0 1 too few examined
Mar 2 2 too few examined
Apr 26 30 87% 70% to 95%
May 91 98 93% 86% to 97%
Jun 436 442 99% 97% to 99%
Jul 518 526 98% 97% to 99%
Aug 261 269 97% 94% to 98%
Sep 45 49 92% 81% to 97%
Oct 7 8 88% 53% to 98%
Nov 2 2 too few examined
Dec 0 0 too few examined

Peak flowering in Jun. Each bar is the share of Melampyrum pratense 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. 1,390 of 1,429 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 2,020 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -14.0 °C -5.4 °C 2.5 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 16.4 °C 21.5 °C 24.2 °C
Annual rainfall 561 mm 750 mm 1,736 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 90 mm 126 mm 304 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 2,020 research-grade observations of Melampyrum pratense 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 60 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.

  • Marinellia vulgaris Bubani
  • Melampyrum alpestre Brügger
  • Melampyrum alpestre Brugger
  • Melampyrum castanetorum (J.Muir) Dalla Torre & Sarnth.
  • Melampyrum chrysanthum (Beauverd) H.E.Hess, Landolt & R.Hirzel
  • Melampyrum commutatum Tausch ex A.Kern.
  • Melampyrum digitatum Schur
  • Melampyrum hastatum Gilib.
  • Melampyrum laciniatum Kosh. & V.J.Zinger
  • Melampyrum laciniatum Koshevn. & Zing.
  • Melampyrum montanum Johnst.
  • Melampyrum montanum subsp. scotianum (Beauverd) Soó
  • Melampyrum montanum subvar. scotianum Beauverd
  • Melampyrum oligocladum (Beauverd) Fritsch
  • Melampyrum paludosum (Gaudin) Prantl
  • Melampyrum paradoxum Ronniger & Schinz
  • Melampyrum pratense f. albido-sulfureum C.G.Westerl.
  • Melampyrum pratense f. angustifolium (Lange) Merino
  • Melampyrum pratense f. extremum C.G.Westerl.
  • Melampyrum pratense f. hartlii Soó ex Hartl
  • Melampyrum pratense f. latifolium (Schübl. & G.Martens) Merino
  • Melampyrum pratense f. ovatum (Spenn.) Beauverd
  • Melampyrum pratense f. umbrosum C.G.Westerl.
  • Melampyrum pratense prol. commutatum (Tausch ex A.Kern.) Rouy

and 36 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.