Melampyrum sylvaticumL.

WFO wfo-0001429999 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Melampyrum sylvaticum, photographed by Elias
fig. a Elias, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-15 / obs. 197884277

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 27 botanical countries

Regions where Melampyrum sylvaticum is native: West Siberia, Austria, Baltic States, Belarus, Bulgaria, Czechia-Slovakia, Denmark, East European Russia, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, North European Russia, Northwest European Russia, Norway, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine West SiberiaAustriaBaltic StatesBelarusBulgariaCzechia-SlovakiaDenmarkEast European RussiaFinlandFranceGermanyGreeceIcelandIrelandItalyNetherlandsNorth European RussiaNorthwest European RussiaNorwayNW. Balkan Pen.PolandRomaniaSpainSwedenSwitzerlandUkraine
Native distribution of Melampyrum sylvaticum, 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
Bulgaria BUL
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
Denmark DEN
East European Russia RUE
Finland FIN
France FRA
Germany GER
Great Britain GRB
Greece GRC
Iceland ICE
Ireland IRE
Italy ITA
Netherlands NET
North European Russia RUN
Northwest European Russia RUW
Norway NOR
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Romania ROM
Spain SPA
Sweden SWE
Switzerland SWI
Ukraine UKR
West Siberia WSB ASIA-TEMPERATE

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 261 in flower of 265 examined

Proportion of examined Melampyrum sylvaticum in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 0 0 too few examined
Feb 0 0 too few examined
Mar 0 0 too few examined
Apr 0 2 too few examined
May 2 3 too few examined
Jun 80 81 99% 93% to 100%
Jul 135 135 100% 97% to 100%
Aug 43 43 100% 92% to 100%
Sep 1 1 too few examined
Oct 0 0 too few examined
Nov 0 0 too few examined
Dec 0 0 too few examined

Peak flowering in Jul. Each bar is the share of Melampyrum sylvaticum 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. 261 of 265 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 9 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 2,019 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -14.9 °C -9.6 °C -4.5 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 15.0 °C 18.9 °C 22.0 °C
Annual rainfall 647 mm 1,142 mm 2,092 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 98 mm 195 mm 411 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 2,019 research-grade observations of Melampyrum sylvaticum 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 28 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.

  • Melampyrum aestivale Ronniger & Schinz
  • Melampyrum alpestre Pers.
  • Melampyrum carpaticum Schult.
  • Melampyrum dentatum Schur
  • Melampyrum hians Gilib.
  • Melampyrum hyans Gilib.
  • Melampyrum intermedium Ronniger & Schinz
  • Melampyrum intermedium E.P.Perrier & Songeon
  • Melampyrum laricetorum A.Kern. ex Dalla Torre
  • Melampyrum nanum Fritsch
  • Melampyrum nemorosum prol. intermedium (Perrier & Songeon) Rouy
  • Melampyrum subsilvaticum Schinz & Ronniger
  • Melampyrum sylvaticum f. decumbens C.G.Westerl.
  • Melampyrum sylvaticum f. pseudonemorosum Montell
  • Melampyrum sylvaticum f. subovatum C.G.Westerl.
  • Melampyrum sylvaticum f. versicolor Lindstr.
  • Melampyrum sylvaticum subsp. aestivale (Ronniger & Schinz) Soó
  • Melampyrum sylvaticum subsp. carpathicum (Schult.) Soó
  • Melampyrum sylvaticum subsp. carpaticum (Schult.) Soó
  • Melampyrum sylvaticum subsp. intermedium Ronniger
  • Melampyrum sylvaticum subsp. subsilvaticum (Schinz & Ronniger) Soó
  • Melampyrum sylvaticum subsp. transsilvanicum (Schur) Soó
  • Melampyrum sylvaticum var. aestivale (Ronniger & Schinz) Hartl
  • Melampyrum sylvaticum var. bicolor Behm

and 4 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. 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.