Moenchia mantica(L.) Bartl.

WFO wfo-0000374715 Accepted WFO 2026-06 3 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–c · 2 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 2 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.

Moenchia mantica, photographed by Kostas Zontanos
fig. a Kostas Zontanos, CC BY 4.0 / 2016-04-29 / obs. 12009914
Moenchia mantica, photographed by Kostas Zontanos
fig. b Kostas Zontanos, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 12009968
Moenchia mantica, photographed by Patrick Schwager
fig. c Patrick Schwager, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 68046061

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 12 botanical countries

Regions where Moenchia mantica is native: East Aegean Is., Türkiye, Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Italy, NW. Balkan Pen., Romania, Switzerland, Türkiye-in-Europe East Aegean Is.TürkiyeAlbaniaAustriaBulgariaGreeceHungaryItalyNW. Balkan Pen.RomaniaSwitzerlandTürkiye-in-Europe
Native distribution of Moenchia mantica, 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
Albania ALB EUROPE
Austria AUT
Bulgaria BUL
Greece GRC
Hungary HUN
Italy ITA
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Romania ROM
Switzerland SWI
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
East Aegean Is. EAI ASIA-TEMPERATE
Türkiye TUR

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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 153 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -5.2 °C -4.2 °C 4.5 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 23.9 °C 25.5 °C 27.5 °C
Annual rainfall 590 mm 745 mm 1,098 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 20 mm 109 mm 183 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 153 research-grade observations of Moenchia mantica 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.

Also published as 8 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.

  • Alsine mantica (L.) E.H.L.Krause
  • Cerastium caeruleum Boiss.
  • Cerastium glaucum (Pers.) Gren.
  • Cerastium manticum L.
  • Malachium caeruleum (Boiss.) Jaub. & Spach
  • Malachium manticum (L.) Rchb.
  • Moenchia caerulea (Boiss.) Boiss.
  • Stellaria mantica DC.

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.