Pimpinella saxifragaL.

burnet saxifrageburnet-saxifragesolidstem burnet saxifrage

WFO wfo-0000391166 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Pimpinella saxifraga, photographed by Vladimir Atachkin
fig. a Vladimir Atachkin, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-11 / obs. 205133424

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 43 botanical countries

Regions where Pimpinella saxifraga is native: Altay, Iran, Iraq, Irkutsk, Kazakhstan, Krasnoyarsk, North Caucasus, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, West Siberia, Albania, Austria, Baltic States, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Central European Russia, Czechia-Slovakia, Denmark, East European Russia, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Krym, Netherlands, North European Russia, Northwest European Russia, Norway, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Romania, Sardegna, South European Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Türkiye-in-Europe, Ukraine AltayIranIraqIrkutskKazakhstanKrasnoyarskNorth CaucasusTranscaucasusTürkiyeWest SiberiaAlbaniaAustriaBaltic StatesBelarusBelgiumBulgariaCentral European RussiaCzechia-SlovakiaDenmarkEast European RussiaFinlandFranceGermanyGreeceHungaryIrelandItalyKrymNetherlandsNorth European RussiaNorthwest European RussiaNorwayNW. Balkan Pen.PolandRomaniaSouth European RussiaSpainSwedenSwitzerlandTürkiye-in-EuropeUkraine Sardegna
Native distribution of Pimpinella saxifraga, 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
Baltic States BLT
Belarus BLR
Belgium BGM
Bulgaria BUL
Central European Russia RUC
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
Denmark DEN
East European Russia RUE
Finland FIN
France FRA
Germany GER
Great Britain GRB
Greece GRC
Hungary HUN
Ireland IRE
Italy ITA
Krym KRY
Netherlands NET
North European Russia RUN
Northwest European Russia RUW
Norway NOR
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Romania ROM
Sardegna SAR
South European Russia RUS
Spain SPA
Sweden SWE
Switzerland SWI
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
Ukraine UKR
Altay ALT ASIA-TEMPERATE
Iran IRN
Iraq IRQ
Irkutsk IRK
Kazakhstan KAZ
Krasnoyarsk KRA
North Caucasus NCS
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR
West Siberia WSB

Not drawn on the map: Great Britain. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is listed rather than guessed at.

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 405 in flower of 561 examined

Proportion of examined Pimpinella saxifraga in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 0 1 too few examined
Feb 0 1 too few examined
Mar 0 5 0% 0% to 43%
Apr 0 29 0% 0% to 12%
May 0 30 0% 0% to 11%
Jun 19 38 50% 35% to 65%
Jul 150 181 83% 77% to 88%
Aug 110 123 89% 83% to 94%
Sep 72 87 83% 73% to 89%
Oct 40 47 85% 72% to 93%
Nov 11 13 85% 58% to 96%
Dec 3 6 50% 19% to 81%

Peak flowering in Aug. Each bar is the share of Pimpinella saxifraga 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. 405 of 561 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 2 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 1,943 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -20.4 °C -11.4 °C -1.3 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 20.0 °C 23.0 °C 24.9 °C
Annual rainfall 449 mm 627 mm 954 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 49 mm 101 mm 184 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 1,943 research-grade observations of Pimpinella saxifraga 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 84 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.

  • Apium laconicum (Halácsy) Calest.
  • Apium saxifragum (L.) Calest.
  • Apium tragoselinum Crantz
  • Carum alpinum (Vest ex Schult.) Baill.
  • Carum nigrum (Mill.) Baill.
  • Carum saxifraga (L.) Baill.
  • Pimpinella acaulis Krock.
  • Pimpinella alpestris Schult.
  • Pimpinella alpina Host
  • Pimpinella angustifolia Gilib.
  • Pimpinella asopii Orph. ex Boiss.
  • Pimpinella calvertii Boiss.
  • Pimpinella crispa Hornem.
  • Pimpinella dissecta Pollini
  • Pimpinella dissecta Retz.
  • Pimpinella genevensis Vill.
  • Pimpinella hircina (L.) Mill.
  • Pimpinella intermedia Nees
  • Pimpinella laciniata Gilib.
  • Pimpinella laconica Halácsy
  • Pimpinella latifolia Gllib.
  • Pimpinella lucida Schur
  • Pimpinella magna Hablitz
  • Pimpinella magna subsp. dissecta (Retz.) Schübl. & G.Martens

and 60 more.

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.