Micranthes nivalis(L.) Small

alpine saxifrage

WFO wfo-0000451229 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 6 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 6 times, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Micranthes nivalis, photographed by Rose Zappa
fig. a Rose Zappa, CC BY 4.0 / 2018-08-05 / obs. 49081190
Micranthes nivalis, photographed by Rose Zappa
fig. b Rose Zappa, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 23197397
Micranthes nivalis, photographed by Rose Zappa
fig. c Rose Zappa, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 49081192
Micranthes nivalis, photographed by Rose Zappa
fig. d Rose Zappa, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 23197392
Micranthes nivalis, photographed by Valerii Glazunov
fig. e Valerii Glazunov, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 177116767
Micranthes nivalis, photographed by Terry Instone
fig. f Terry Instone, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 143650510
Micranthes nivalis, photographed by Ida B D Jacobsen
fig. g Ida B D Jacobsen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 143727456
Micranthes nivalis, photographed by William Stephens
fig. h William Stephens, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 67421430

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 34 botanical countries

Regions where Micranthes nivalis is native: Altay, Amur, Buryatiya, Chita, Irkutsk, Kamchatka, Khabarovsk, Krasnoyarsk, Magadan, Tuva, West Siberia, Yakutiya, East European Russia, Finland, Føroyar, Great Britain, Iceland, Ireland, North European Russia, Northwest European Russia, Norway, Poland, Svalbard, Sweden, Alaska, Alberta, Aleutian Is., British Columbia, Greenland, Labrador, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Québec, Yukon AltayAmurBuryatiyaChitaIrkutskKamchatkaKhabarovskKrasnoyarskMagadanTuvaWest SiberiaYakutiyaEast European RussiaFinlandIcelandIrelandNorth European RussiaNorthwest European RussiaNorwayPolandSvalbardSwedenAlaskaAlbertaBritish ColumbiaGreenlandLabradorNorthwest TerritoriesNunavutQuébecYukon Føroyar
Native distribution of Micranthes nivalis, 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
Altay ALT ASIA-TEMPERATE
Amur AMU
Buryatiya BRY
Chita CTA
Irkutsk IRK
Kamchatka KAM
Khabarovsk KHA
Krasnoyarsk KRA
Magadan MAG
Tuva TVA
West Siberia WSB
Yakutiya YAK
East European Russia RUE EUROPE
Finland FIN
Føroyar FOR
Great Britain GRB
Iceland ICE
Ireland IRE
North European Russia RUN
Northwest European Russia RUW
Norway NOR
Poland POL
Svalbard SVA
Sweden SWE
Alaska ASK NORTHERN AMERICA
Alberta ABT
Aleutian Is. ALU
British Columbia BRC
Greenland GNL
Labrador LAB
Northwest Territories NWT
Nunavut NUN
Québec QUE
Yukon YUK

Not drawn on the map: Great Britain, Aleutian Is.. We hold no public-domain boundary for these regions, so they are 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 39 in flower of 54 examined

Peak flowering in Jun. Each bar is the share of Micranthes nivalis 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. 39 of 54 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 399 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -35.2 °C -18.9 °C -0.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 2.6 °C 12.3 °C 17.7 °C
Annual rainfall 280 mm 720 mm 2,111 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 31 mm 103 mm 375 mm

It is found where winters are arctic. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 399 research-grade observations of Micranthes nivalis 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.

  • Dermasea nivalis Haw.
  • Micranthes kumlienii Small
  • Robertsonia nivalis Link
  • Saxifraga kumlienii (Small) Fedde
  • Saxifraga longiscapa D.Don
  • Saxifraga nigricans Willd. ex Sternb.
  • Saxifraga nivalis L.
  • Saxifraga nivalis f. labradorica (Fernald) Polunin
  • Saxifraga nivalis f. longipetiolata Engl. & Irmsch.
  • Saxifraga nivalis var. elatior Hartm.
  • Saxifraga nivalis var. genuina Abrom.
  • Saxifraga nivalis var. labradorica Fernald
  • Saxifraga nivalis var. novokschonovii Popov
  • Saxifraga obtusa Nasarow
  • Saxifraga primulifolia Willd. ex Sternb.

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. USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol SANI6. public domain. 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.