Paraprenanthes sororia

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Paraprenanthes sororia, photographed by 葉子 — fig. b 葉子, CC0 1.0 / obs. 111335086

Paraprenanthes sororia, photographed by Junichi　Mandai — fig. c Junichi　Mandai, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 83913006

Paraprenanthes sororia, photographed by Tatsutomo Chin — fig. e Tatsutomo Chin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 41987061

Paraprenanthes sororia, photographed by りなべる — fig. g りなべる, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 111698725

Paraprenanthes sororia, photographed by Cheng-Te Hsu — fig. h Cheng-Te Hsu, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 80000796

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 5 botanical countries

Native distribution of Paraprenanthes sororia, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
China South-Central	CHC	ASIA-TEMPERATE
China Southeast	CHS
Japan	JAP
Taiwan	TAI
Vietnam	VIE	ASIA-TROPICAL

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 627 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	1.4 °C	9.5 °C	12.5 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	22.0 °C	26.8 °C	30.0 °C
Annual rainfall	2,204 mm	3,805 mm	4,706 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	149 mm	398 mm	799 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 627 research-grade observations of Paraprenanthes sororia 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 22 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.

Ixeris microcephala Nakai
Ixeris sororia (Miq.) Nakai
Lactuca sororia Miq.
Lactuca sororia f. glabra Ling
Lactuca sororia f. sororia
Lactuca sororia f. typica Ling
Lactuca sororia var. glabra Kitam.
Lactuca sororia var. glandulosa Kitam.
Lactuca sororia var. nudipes Kitam.
Lactuca sororia var. pilipes (Migo) Chang & Y.C.Tseng
Lactuca sororia var. pilipes (Migo) Kitam.
Lactuca sororia var. sororia
Lactuca thirionni H.Lév.
Mycelis sororia (Miq.) Nakai
Mycelis sororia var. nudipes Migo
Mycelis sororia var. pilipes Migo
Mycelis sororia var. sororia
Paraprenanthes multiformis C.Shih
Paraprenanthes pilipes (Migo) C.Shih
Paraprenanthes thirionni (H.Lév.) C.Shih
Prenanthes pilipes (Migo) Y.R.Ling
Prenanthes sororia (Miq.) Y.R.Ling

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
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.