Mutellina purpurea(Poir.) Reduron, Charpin & Pimenov

alpine lovage

WFO wfo-0000371941 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Mutellina purpurea, photographed by Alexandra Gillespie
fig. a Alexandra Gillespie, CC0 1.0 / 2022-05-26 / obs. 200701248
Mutellina purpurea, photographed by Wolfgang Jauch
fig. b Wolfgang Jauch, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 150233895
Mutellina purpurea, photographed by agujaceratops
fig. c agujaceratops, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 140865592
Mutellina purpurea, photographed by Jason Grant
fig. d Jason Grant, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 138339096
Mutellina purpurea, photographed by Jason Grant
fig. e Jason Grant, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 93320331
Mutellina purpurea, photographed by Christian Berg
fig. f Christian Berg, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 99833064
Mutellina purpurea, photographed by Grzegorz Grzejszczak
fig. g Grzegorz Grzejszczak, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 14200985
Mutellina purpurea, photographed by agujaceratops
fig. h agujaceratops, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 140927559

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
K004094587
Filed as
Phellandrium mutellina L.
Det. by
not recorded on this sheet
Collected
Lapeyrouse, P. de
Origin
not recorded
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 13 botanical countries

Regions where Mutellina purpurea is native: Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Czechia-Slovakia, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Romania, Switzerland, Ukraine AlbaniaAustriaBulgariaCzechia-SlovakiaFranceGermanyGreeceItalyNW. Balkan Pen.PolandRomaniaSwitzerlandUkraine
Native distribution of Mutellina purpurea, 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
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
France FRA
Germany GER
Greece GRC
Italy ITA
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Romania ROM
Switzerland SWI
Ukraine UKR

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 384 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -18.0 °C -13.6 °C -7.0 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 11.7 °C 14.4 °C 18.6 °C
Annual rainfall 1,113 mm 1,708 mm 2,484 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 172 mm 287 mm 496 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 384 research-grade observations of Mutellina purpurea 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 17 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.

  • Aethusa mutellina (L.) Lam.
  • Ligusticum mutellina (L.) Crantz
  • Ligusticum mutellina prol. adonidifolium (J.Gay) Rouy & E.G.Camus
  • Ligusticum mutellina subsp. adonidifolium (J.Gay) Beauverd
  • Ligusticum mutellina var. adonidifolium (J.Gay) St.-Lag.
  • Ligusticum mutellina var. elatius Rouy & E.G.Camus
  • Meon mutellinum St.-Lag.
  • Meum adonidifolium J.Gay
  • Meum mutellina (L.) Gaertn.
  • Meum mutellina var. adonidifolium (J.Gay) St.-Lag.
  • Mutellina adonidifolia (J.Gay) Gutermann
  • Mutellina adonidifolia var. mutellina (L.) Reduron
  • Oenanthe mutellina (L.) DC.
  • Oenanthe purpurea Poir.
  • Phellandrium mutellina L.
  • Selinum mutellina (L.) Prantl
  • Seseli mutellina (L.) Steud.

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 LIMU7. 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.