Prenanthes purpureaL.

purple lettucerattlesnake root

WFO wfo-0000134561 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Prenanthes purpurea, photographed by Jason Grant
fig. a Jason Grant, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-02 / obs. 202770728
Prenanthes purpurea, photographed by Tobias Schönberg
fig. b Tobias Schönberg, CC0 1.0 / obs. 201623301
Prenanthes purpurea, photographed by Thomas Koffel
fig. c Thomas Koffel, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200955474
Prenanthes purpurea, photographed by Jens-Christian Svenning
fig. d Jens-Christian Svenning, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199682918
Prenanthes purpurea, photographed by Caleb Catto
fig. e Caleb Catto, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 162726599
Prenanthes purpurea, photographed by Eleftherios Katsillis
fig. f Eleftherios Katsillis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 161782243
Prenanthes purpurea, photographed by Eleftherios Katsillis
fig. g Eleftherios Katsillis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 159198349
Prenanthes purpurea, photographed by Patrick Hacker
fig. h Patrick Hacker, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 157546676

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 22 botanical countries

Regions where Prenanthes purpurea is native: North Caucasus, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Corse, Czechia-Slovakia, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Norway, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine North CaucasusTranscaucasusTürkiyeAlbaniaAustriaBelgiumBulgariaCorseCzechia-SlovakiaDenmarkFranceGermanyGreeceHungaryItalyNorwayNW. Balkan Pen.PolandRomaniaSpainSwitzerlandUkraine
Native distribution of Prenanthes purpurea, 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.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Albania ALB EUROPE
Austria AUT
Belgium BGM
Bulgaria BUL
Corse COR
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
Denmark DEN
France FRA
Germany GER
Greece GRC
Hungary HUN
Italy ITA
Norway NOR
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Romania ROM
Spain SPA
Switzerland SWI
Ukraine UKR
North Caucasus NCS ASIA-TEMPERATE
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR

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 478 in flower of 606 examined

Peak flowering in Aug. Each bar is the share of Prenanthes purpurea 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. 478 of 606 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 4 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.

Also published as 13 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.

  • Chondrilla purpurea (L.) Lam.
  • Chondrilla tenuifolia (L.) Lam.
  • Prenanthes purpurea subsp. purpurea
  • Prenanthes purpurea subsp. tenuifolia (L.) Arcang.
  • Prenanthes purpurea var. angustifolia W.D.J.Koch
  • Prenanthes purpurea var. corsica Rouy
  • Prenanthes purpurea var. intermedia Rouy
  • Prenanthes purpurea var. querciformis Murr
  • Prenanthes purpurea var. tenuifolia (L.) St.-Lag.
  • Prenanthes schlosseri Heuff.
  • Prenanthes tenuifolia L.
  • Prenanthes transsilvanica Schur
  • Prenanthes wolfiana Schur

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.