Pentaglottis sempervirens (Green Alkanet)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Pentaglottis sempervirens, photographed by Zeke Marshall — fig. a Zeke Marshall, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-13 / obs. 205820983

Pentaglottis sempervirens, photographed by Derek Winterburn — fig. b Derek Winterburn, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204958921

Pentaglottis sempervirens, photographed by Daniel Cahen — fig. d Daniel Cahen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202815983

Pentaglottis sempervirens, photographed by kitbeard — fig. e kitbeard, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202903804

Pentaglottis sempervirens, photographed by Karen Fry — fig. f Karen Fry, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202252516

Pentaglottis sempervirens, photographed by David Carey — fig. g David Carey, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202762430

Pentaglottis sempervirens, photographed by Pete Bradshaw — fig. h Pete Bradshaw, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201016128

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 3 botanical countries

Native distribution of Pentaglottis sempervirens, 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
France	FRA	EUROPE
Portugal	POR
Spain	SPA

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 1,942 in flower of 2,088 examined

62%

43%

85%

98%

100%

99%

96%

86%

95%

91%

82%

76%

Proportion of examined Pentaglottis sempervirens in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	26	42	62%	47% to 75%
Feb	27	63	43%	31% to 55%
Mar	181	214	85%	79% to 89%
Apr	681	698	98%	96% to 98%
May	496	497	100%	99% to 100%
Jun	189	190	99%	97% to 100%
Jul	78	81	96%	90% to 99%
Aug	61	71	86%	76% to 92%
Sep	58	61	95%	87% to 98%
Oct	79	87	91%	83% to 95%
Nov	32	39	82%	67% to 91%
Dec	34	45	76%	61% to 86%

Peak flowering in May. Each bar is the share of Pentaglottis sempervirens 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. 1,942 of 2,088 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.

Also published as 7 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.

Anchusa adamii Mazziari
Anchusa sempervirens L.
Anchusa vulgaris Dumort.
Buglossa sempervirens (L.) Gray
Buglossum sempervirens (L.) All.
Caryolopha sempervirens (L.) Fisch. & Trautv.
Omphalodes sempervirens (L.) D.Don

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.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
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.