Ocimum basilicumL.

sweet basil

WFO wfo-0000253230 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Ocimum basilicum, photographed by Ong Jyh Seng
fig. a Ong Jyh Seng, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2021-06-30 / obs. 139900104
Ocimum basilicum, photographed by Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas
fig. b Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 97734615
Ocimum basilicum, photographed by Francisco Farriols Sarabia
fig. c Francisco Farriols Sarabia, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 57669872
Ocimum basilicum, photographed by Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas
fig. d Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 51988589
Ocimum basilicum, photographed by coenobita
fig. e coenobita, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 29212583
Ocimum basilicum, photographed by Juan Cruzado Cortés
fig. f Juan Cruzado Cortés, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 2903074
Ocimum basilicum, photographed by Diogo Luiz
fig. g Diogo Luiz, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 55508157
Ocimum basilicum, photographed by Bill Levine
fig. h Bill Levine, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 183039237

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 28 botanical countries

Regions where Ocimum basilicum is native: China South-Central, China Southeast, Taiwan, Andaman Is., Assam, Bangladesh, Bismarck Archipelago, Borneo, Cambodia, East Himalaya, India, Jawa, Laos, Lesser Sunda Is., Maluku, Myanmar, Nepal, New Guinea, Nicobar Is., Philippines, Sri Lanka, Sulawesi, Sumatera, Thailand, Vietnam, West Himalaya, Queensland, Western Australia China South-CentralChina SoutheastTaiwanAssamBangladeshBismarck ArchipelagoBorneoCambodiaEast HimalayaIndiaJawaLaosLesser Sunda Is.MalukuMyanmarNepalNew GuineaPhilippinesSri LankaSulawesiSumateraThailandVietnamWest HimalayaQueenslandWestern Australia Andaman Is.Nicobar Is.
Native distribution of Ocimum basilicum, 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
Andaman Is. AND ASIA-TROPICAL
Assam ASS
Bangladesh BAN
Bismarck Archipelago BIS
Borneo BOR
Cambodia CBD
East Himalaya EHM
India IND
Jawa JAW
Laos LAO
Lesser Sunda Is. LSI
Maluku MOL
Myanmar MYA
Nepal NEP
New Guinea NWG
Nicobar Is. NCB
Philippines PHI
Sri Lanka SRL
Sulawesi SUL
Sumatera SUM
Thailand THA
Vietnam VIE
West Himalaya WHM
China South-Central CHC ASIA-TEMPERATE
China Southeast CHS
Taiwan TAI
Queensland QLD AUSTRALASIA
Western Australia WAU

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 34 in flower of 38 examined

Peak flowering in Jan. Each bar is the share of Ocimum basilicum 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. 34 of 38 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 495 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 0.1 °C 14.7 °C 24.3 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 23.4 °C 30.4 °C 40.0 °C
Annual rainfall 158 mm 1,198 mm 2,513 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 2 mm 58 mm 281 mm

It is found where winters are cool but frost is light or absent. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 495 research-grade observations of Ocimum basilicum 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 40 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.

  • Ocimum album L.
  • Ocimum anisatum Benth.
  • Ocimum barrelieri Roth
  • Ocimum basilicum var. album (L.) Benth.
  • Ocimum basilicum var. bullatum (Lam.) Alef.
  • Ocimum basilicum var. chamaeleonticum Alef.
  • Ocimum basilicum var. densiflorum Benth.
  • Ocimum basilicum var. difforme Benth.
  • Ocimum basilicum var. glabratum Benth.
  • Ocimum basilicum var. majus Benth.
  • Ocimum basilicum var. pelvifolium Alef.
  • Ocimum basilicum var. purpurascens Benth.
  • Ocimum basilicum var. thyrsiflorum (L.) Benth.
  • Ocimum basilicum var. violaceum Alef.
  • Ocimum basilicum var. violocrispum Alef.
  • Ocimum basilicum var. viridicrispum Alef.
  • Ocimum basilicum var. vulgare Alef.
  • Ocimum bullatum Lam.
  • Ocimum caryophyllatum Roxb.
  • Ocimum chevalieri Briq.
  • Ocimum ciliare B.Heyne ex Hook.f.
  • Ocimum ciliatum Hornem.
  • Ocimum citrodorum Blanco
  • Ocimum cochleatum Desf.

and 16 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. 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.