Micranthes stellaris(L.) Galasso, Banfi & Soldano

saxifrage

WFO wfo-0001280029 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Micranthes stellaris, photographed by Attila Oláh
fig. a Attila Oláh, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-08-21 / obs. 153573620
Micranthes stellaris, photographed by Donald Davesne
fig. b Donald Davesne, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 155718196
Micranthes stellaris, photographed by Jens-Christian Svenning
fig. c Jens-Christian Svenning, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 146393184
Micranthes stellaris, photographed by Thomas Koffel
fig. d Thomas Koffel, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 146767930
Micranthes stellaris, photographed by Jens-Christian Svenning
fig. e Jens-Christian Svenning, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 145226938
Micranthes stellaris, photographed by Annie Evankow
fig. f Annie Evankow, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 145151444
Micranthes stellaris, photographed by Jens-Christian Svenning
fig. g Jens-Christian Svenning, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 144963823
Micranthes stellaris, photographed by radek_sokol
fig. h radek_sokol, CC0 1.0 / obs. 141903930

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
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Accession
K009000928
Filed as
Micranthes stellaris (L.) Galasso, Banfi & Soldano
Det. by
Aronsson, M.
Collected
Breman, E.; McCabe, S.; Johnson, N.; Weststrand, S.; Aronsson, M. 2023-09-09
Origin
SE
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

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 26 botanical countries

Regions where Micranthes stellaris is native: Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Corse, Finland, Føroyar, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, North European Russia, Norway, NW. Balkan Pen., Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, Greenland, Labrador, Nunavut, Québec AlbaniaAustriaBulgariaCorseFinlandFranceGermanyGreeceIcelandIrelandItalyNorth European RussiaNorwayNW. Balkan Pen.PortugalRomaniaSpainSwedenSwitzerlandUkraineGreenlandLabradorNunavutQuébec Føroyar
Native distribution of Micranthes stellaris, 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
Austria AUT
Bulgaria BUL
Corse COR
Finland FIN
Føroyar FOR
France FRA
Germany GER
Great Britain GRB
Greece GRC
Iceland ICE
Ireland IRE
Italy ITA
North European Russia RUN
Norway NOR
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Portugal POR
Romania ROM
Spain SPA
Sweden SWE
Switzerland SWI
Ukraine UKR
Greenland GNL NORTHERN AMERICA
Labrador LAB
Nunavut NUN
Québec QUE

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 297 in flower of 315 examined

Peak flowering in Jul. Each bar is the share of Micranthes stellaris 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. 297 of 315 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 7 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 1,987 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -18.2 °C -13.0 °C -1.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 10.4 °C 14.1 °C 18.6 °C
Annual rainfall 956 mm 1,654 mm 2,911 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 137 mm 272 mm 502 mm

It is found where winters are severely cold. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,987 research-grade observations of Micranthes stellaris 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 41 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.

  • Hydatica brunoniana Small
  • Hydatica foliolosa Raf.
  • Hydatica stellaris Gray
  • Hydatica stellaris var. minor Gray
  • Micranthes engleri (Dalla Torre) Galasso, Banfi & Soldano
  • Robertsonia stellaris Link
  • Saxifraga bejarana (Pau) Rivas Goday
  • Saxifraga engleri Dalla Torre
  • Saxifraga gredensis Riv.Mateos
  • Saxifraga leucanthemifolia var. brunoniana (Bong.) Engl.
  • Saxifraga notkana Moc. ex Ser.
  • Saxifraga pegaia Dalla Torre
  • Saxifraga prolifera (Sternb.) Landolt
  • Saxifraga schleicheri D.Don ex G.Don
  • Saxifraga stellaris L.
  • Saxifraga stellaris f. bejarana Pau
  • Saxifraga stellaris f. pygmaea Lange
  • Saxifraga stellaris subsp. alpigena Temesy
  • Saxifraga stellaris subsp. engleri (Dalla Torre) P.Fourn.
  • Saxifraga stellaris subsp. prolifera (Sternb.) Temesy
  • Saxifraga stellaris subsp. robusta (Engl.) Gremli
  • Saxifraga stellaris var. acaulis Haller f.
  • Saxifraga stellaris var. angustifolia Willk.
  • Saxifraga stellaris var. brunoniana Bong.

and 17 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. USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol SAST16. 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.