Nigella damascenaL.

Devil-in-the-bushdevil in the bushlove in a mistlove-in-a-mist

WFO wfo-0000380636 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Nigella damascena, photographed by Philipp
fig. a Philipp, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-11 / obs. 205077416
Nigella damascena, photographed by Yann Kemper
fig. b Yann Kemper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 202492162
Nigella damascena, photographed by Mourad Harzallah
fig. c Mourad Harzallah, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202898919
Nigella damascena, photographed by Chris Procter
fig. d Chris Procter, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201934425
Nigella damascena, photographed by Andrew Skotnicki
fig. e Andrew Skotnicki, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201662722
Nigella damascena, photographed by luluchouette
fig. f luluchouette, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204074103
Nigella damascena, photographed by Quentin Groom
fig. g Quentin Groom, CC0 1.0 / obs. 197472663
Nigella damascena, photographed by Tim Johnson
fig. h Tim Johnson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 197549663

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 29 botanical countries

Regions where Nigella damascena is native: Algeria, Canary Is., Libya, Madeira, Morocco, Selvagens, Tunisia, Cyprus, East Aegean Is., Iran, Lebanon-Syria, North Caucasus, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, Albania, Baleares, Bulgaria, Corse, France, Greece, Italy, Kriti, Krym, NW. Balkan Pen., Portugal, Sardegna, Sicilia, Spain, Türkiye-in-Europe AlgeriaLibyaMoroccoSelvagensTunisiaCyprusEast Aegean Is.IranLebanon-SyriaNorth CaucasusTranscaucasusTürkiyeAlbaniaBulgariaCorseFranceGreeceItalyKritiKrymNW. Balkan Pen.PortugalSiciliaSpainTürkiye-in-Europe Canary Is.MadeiraBalearesSardegna
Native distribution of Nigella damascena, 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
Baleares BAL
Bulgaria BUL
Corse COR
France FRA
Greece GRC
Italy ITA
Kriti KRI
Krym KRY
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Portugal POR
Sardegna SAR
Sicilia SIC
Spain SPA
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Canary Is. CNY
Libya LBY
Madeira MDR
Morocco MOR
Selvagens SEL
Tunisia TUN
Cyprus CYP ASIA-TEMPERATE
East Aegean Is. EAI
Iran IRN
Lebanon-Syria LBS
North Caucasus NCS
Transcaucasus TCS
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.

Flowering 646 in flower of 754 examined

Peak flowering in Feb. Each bar is the share of Nigella damascena 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. 646 of 754 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 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 1,998 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -4.6 °C 1.8 °C 9.5 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 19.0 °C 25.9 °C 31.5 °C
Annual rainfall 521 mm 845 mm 1,492 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 10 mm 135 mm 257 mm

It is found where winters bring light 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 1,998 research-grade observations of Nigella damascena 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 13 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.

  • Erobathos coarctatum (C.C.Gmel.) Spach
  • Erobathos damascenum Spach
  • Melanthium damascenum Medik.
  • Nigella bithynica Azn.
  • Nigella bourgaei Jord.
  • Nigella coarctata C.C.Gmel.
  • Nigella coerulea Lam.
  • Nigella elegans Salisb.
  • Nigella involucrata Moench
  • Nigella multifida Gaterau
  • Nigella nana J.W.Loudon
  • Nigella pygmaea DC.
  • Nigella taurica Steven

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. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. 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.