Petrorhagia prolifera(L.) P.W.Ball & Heywood

Proliferous Pinkchilding pinkproliferous pink

WFO wfo-0000395423 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Petrorhagia prolifera, photographed by Pavel Kacl
fig. a Pavel Kacl, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-21 / obs. 199555050

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.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
211523
Filed as
Petrorhagia prolifera (L.) P.W.Ball & Heywood
Det. by
C.. Logie 2003-01-01
Collected
R. Brand 2002-11-29
Origin
ZA
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 32 botanical countries

Regions where Petrorhagia prolifera is native: Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Iran, North Caucasus, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, Albania, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Corse, Czechia-Slovakia, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Krym, Netherlands, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Romania, Sardegna, Sicilia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Türkiye-in-Europe, Ukraine AlgeriaMoroccoTunisiaIranNorth CaucasusTranscaucasusTürkiyeAlbaniaAustriaBelarusBelgiumBulgariaCorseCzechia-SlovakiaDenmarkFranceGermanyGreeceHungaryItalyKrymNetherlandsNW. Balkan Pen.PolandRomaniaSiciliaSpainSwedenSwitzerlandTürkiye-in-EuropeUkraine Sardegna
Native distribution of Petrorhagia prolifera, 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
Albania ALB EUROPE
Austria AUT
Belarus BLR
Belgium BGM
Bulgaria BUL
Corse COR
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
Denmark DEN
France FRA
Germany GER
Greece GRC
Hungary HUN
Italy ITA
Krym KRY
Netherlands NET
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Romania ROM
Sardegna SAR
Sicilia SIC
Spain SPA
Sweden SWE
Switzerland SWI
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
Ukraine UKR
Iran IRN ASIA-TEMPERATE
North Caucasus NCS
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Morocco MOR
Tunisia TUN

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 305 in flower of 327 examined

Proportion of examined Petrorhagia prolifera in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 1 4 too few examined
Feb 1 4 too few examined
Mar 2 3 too few examined
Apr 2 2 too few examined
May 16 16 100% 81% to 100%
Jun 89 94 95% 88% to 98%
Jul 84 87 97% 90% to 99%
Aug 45 46 98% 89% to 100%
Sep 36 37 97% 86% to 100%
Oct 24 26 92% 76% to 98%
Nov 4 6 67% 30% to 90%
Dec 1 2 too few examined

Peak flowering in May. Each bar is the share of Petrorhagia prolifera 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. 305 of 327 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 5 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 1,980 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -4.9 °C -1.6 °C 4.9 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 21.3 °C 24.8 °C 29.7 °C
Annual rainfall 530 mm 747 mm 1,269 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 80 mm 135 mm 251 mm

It is found where winters bring light frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,980 research-grade observations of Petrorhagia prolifera 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 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.

  • Caryophyllus aridus Moench
  • Caryophyllus diminutus (L.) Christm.
  • Cylichnanthus prolifer (L.) Dulac
  • Dianthus diminutus L.
  • Dianthus prolifer L.
  • Kohlrauschia prolifera Kunth
  • Tunica prolifera (L.) Scop.

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.