Oxytropis tragacanthoidesFisch. ex DC.

WFO wfo-0000199108 Accepted WFO 2026-06 7 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–g · 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.

Oxytropis tragacanthoides, photographed by Татьяна Фирсова
fig. a Татьяна Фирсова, CC0 1.0 / 2021-07-03 / obs. 141609088
Oxytropis tragacanthoides, photographed by Нурхайдарова Татьяна
fig. b Нурхайдарова Татьяна, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 92934974
Oxytropis tragacanthoides, photographed by Dmitry Lyskov
fig. c Dmitry Lyskov, CC0 1.0 / obs. 106316738
Oxytropis tragacanthoides, photographed by Svyatoslav Knyazev
fig. d Svyatoslav Knyazev, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 42572939
Oxytropis tragacanthoides, photographed by Татьяна Фирсова
fig. e Татьяна Фирсова, CC0 1.0 / obs. 141609095
Oxytropis tragacanthoides, photographed by Dmitry Lyskov
fig. f Dmitry Lyskov, CC0 1.0 / obs. 106316749
Oxytropis tragacanthoides, photographed by Dmitry Lyskov
fig. g Dmitry Lyskov, CC0 1.0 / obs. 106316769

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 10 botanical countries

Regions where Oxytropis tragacanthoides is native: Altay, China North-Central, Inner Mongolia, Irkutsk, Kazakhstan, Krasnoyarsk, Mongolia, Qinghai, Tuva, Xinjiang AltayChina North-CentralInner MongoliaIrkutskKazakhstanKrasnoyarskMongoliaQinghaiTuvaXinjiang
Native distribution of Oxytropis tragacanthoides, 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
Altay ALT ASIA-TEMPERATE
China North-Central CHN
Inner Mongolia CHI
Irkutsk IRK
Kazakhstan KAZ
Krasnoyarsk KRA
Mongolia MON
Qinghai CHQ
Tuva TVA
Xinjiang CHX

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 252 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -29.9 °C -26.2 °C -21.4 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 13.9 °C 17.6 °C 24.0 °C
Annual rainfall 146 mm 238 mm 426 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 6 mm 12 mm 23 mm

It is found where winters are arctic. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 252 research-grade observations of Oxytropis tragacanthoides 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.

  • Oxytropis paratragacanthoides Vassilcz.
  • Oxytropis paratraganthoides Vassilcz.
  • Oxytropis tragacanthoides var. curaica Revuschkin
  • Oxytropis tragacanthoides var. glabra Peschkova
  • Oxytropis tragacanthoides var. glabra Peschkova ex Krivenko
  • Oxytropis tragacanthoides var. parviflora Polozhij ex Krivenko
  • Oxytropis tragacanthoides var. parviflora Polozhij
  • Spiesia tragacanthodes (Fisch. ex DC.) Kuntze

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.