Orobanche cumanaWallr.

WFO wfo-0000388508 Accepted WFO 2026-06 5 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–e · 4 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 4 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.

Orobanche cumana, photographed by Eugene Popov
fig. a Eugene Popov, CC BY 4.0 / 2012-09-22 / obs. 17201025
Orobanche cumana, photographed by Dmitriy Bochkov
fig. b Dmitriy Bochkov, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 31485744
Orobanche cumana, photographed by Tatyana Sova
fig. c Tatyana Sova, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 159780045
Orobanche cumana, photographed by Aleksei Baushev
fig. d Aleksei Baushev, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 147588909
Orobanche cumana, photographed by Tatyana Sova
fig. e Tatyana Sova, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 159780037

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 22 botanical countries

Regions where Orobanche cumana is native: Afghanistan, Altay, China North-Central, Inner Mongolia, Iran, Irkutsk, Kazakhstan, Kirgizstan, Krasnoyarsk, Manchuria, Mongolia, North Caucasus, Qinghai, Tadzhikistan, Transcaucasus, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, West Siberia, Xinjiang, Central European Russia, East European Russia, South European Russia AfghanistanAltayChina North-CentralInner MongoliaIranIrkutskKazakhstanKirgizstanKrasnoyarskManchuriaMongoliaNorth CaucasusQinghaiTadzhikistanTranscaucasusTurkmenistanUzbekistanWest SiberiaXinjiangCentral European RussiaEast European RussiaSouth European Russia
Native distribution of Orobanche cumana, 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
Afghanistan AFG ASIA-TEMPERATE
Altay ALT
China North-Central CHN
Inner Mongolia CHI
Iran IRN
Irkutsk IRK
Kazakhstan KAZ
Kirgizstan KGZ
Krasnoyarsk KRA
Manchuria CHM
Mongolia MON
North Caucasus NCS
Qinghai CHQ
Tadzhikistan TZK
Transcaucasus TCS
Turkmenistan TKM
Uzbekistan UZB
West Siberia WSB
Xinjiang CHX
Central European Russia RUC EUROPE
East European Russia RUE
South European Russia RUS

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 87 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -15.3 °C -6.6 °C 0.5 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 24.5 °C 27.0 °C 31.5 °C
Annual rainfall 221 mm 483 mm 622 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 36 mm 88 mm 118 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 87 research-grade observations of Orobanche cumana 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 9 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.

  • Orobanche arenaria M.Bieb.
  • Orobanche bicolor C.A.Mey.
  • Orobanche cernua f. cumana (Wallr.) Beck
  • Orobanche cernua subsp. cumana (Wallr.) Soó
  • Orobanche cernua subsp. parviflora Kotov
  • Orobanche cernua subsp. rajahmundrica Teryokhin
  • Orobanche cernua var. bicolor (C.A.Mey.) Reut.
  • Orobanche glaucantha Trautv.
  • Orobanche sarmatica Kotov

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.