Plantago subulataL.

WFO wfo-0000487291 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 6 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 6 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.

Plantago subulata, photographed by Bastien Alegot
fig. a Bastien Alegot, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-06-11 / obs. 135825901
Plantago subulata, photographed by Christian Berg
fig. b Christian Berg, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 135534346
Plantago subulata, photographed by Julien Renoult
fig. c Julien Renoult, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 128078420
Plantago subulata, photographed by Thomas Koffel
fig. d Thomas Koffel, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 8074497
Plantago subulata, photographed by Christian Berg
fig. e Christian Berg, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 135534258
Plantago subulata, photographed by Thomas Koffel
fig. f Thomas Koffel, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 8074499
Plantago subulata, photographed by Pere Barnola
fig. g Pere Barnola, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 199678307
Plantago subulata, photographed by Ljaž
fig. h Ljaž, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 132350596

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
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Accession
K000648286
Filed as
Plantago subulata L.
Det. by
Hassemer, G.
Collected
s.coll. 1828-01-01
Origin
not recorded
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 19 botanical countries

Regions where Plantago subulata is native: Algeria, Morocco, East Aegean Is., Lebanon-Syria, Türkiye, Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Corse, France, Greece, Italy, NW. Balkan Pen., Portugal, Romania, Sardegna, Sicilia, Spain, Türkiye-in-Europe AlgeriaMoroccoEast Aegean Is.Lebanon-SyriaTürkiyeAlbaniaAustriaBulgariaCorseFranceGreeceItalyNW. Balkan Pen.PortugalRomaniaSiciliaSpainTürkiye-in-Europe Sardegna
Native distribution of Plantago subulata, 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
Bulgaria BUL
Corse COR
France FRA
Greece GRC
Italy ITA
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Portugal POR
Romania ROM
Sardegna SAR
Sicilia SIC
Spain SPA
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
East Aegean Is. EAI ASIA-TEMPERATE
Lebanon-Syria LBS
Türkiye TUR
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Morocco MOR

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 38 in flower of 98 examined

Peak flowering in Jun. Each bar is the share of Plantago subulata 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. 38 of 98 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 6 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 276 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -2.7 °C 6.3 °C 8.7 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 20.8 °C 25.5 °C 27.5 °C
Annual rainfall 545 mm 704 mm 1,131 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 53 mm 78 mm 193 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 276 research-grade observations of Plantago subulata 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 77 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.

  • Plantaginella carinata Fourr.
  • Plantaginella subulata (L.) Fourr.
  • Plantago acanthophylla Decne.
  • Plantago acanthophylla var. eriophora Vayr.
  • Plantago alpina var. capitellata (Ramond ex DC.) Mert. & W.D.J.Koch
  • Plantago brachyphylla Roem. & Schult.
  • Plantago capitella Ramond ex DC.
  • Plantago capitellata Ramond ex DC.
  • Plantago carinata Schrad. ex Mert. & W.D.J.Koch
  • Plantago carinata Lange
  • Plantago gerardii Schult.
  • Plantago holosteum Scop.
  • Plantago holosteum f. vestita Pic.Serm.
  • Plantago holosteum subsp. grovesii (Bég.) Brullo
  • Plantago holosteum subsp. libanotica (Pilg.) Chrtek
  • Plantago holosteum subsp. littoralis (Rouy) Chrtek
  • Plantago holosteum subsp. macrantha Chrtek
  • Plantago holosteum var. filifolia Sennen ex Pilg.
  • Plantago holosteum var. gallica Chrtek
  • Plantago holosteum var. littoralis (Rouy) Kerguélen
  • Plantago humilis Jan ex Guss.
  • Plantago humilis subsp. atlantis (Emb. & Maire) Brullo, Pavone & Terrasi
  • Plantago humilis subsp. granatensis (Willk.) Brullo, Pavone & Terrasi
  • Plantago humilis subsp. insularis (Godr.) Kerguélen & Lambinon

and 53 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. 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.