Prospero autumnale(L.) Speta

WFO wfo-0000724377 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Prospero autumnale, photographed by Ronald Flipphi
fig. a Ronald Flipphi, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2021-10-27 / obs. 168870945
Prospero autumnale, photographed by kfa
fig. b kfa, CC0 1.0 / obs. 164872166
Prospero autumnale, photographed by Karim Haddad
fig. c Karim Haddad, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 164444296
Prospero autumnale, photographed by Karim Haddad
fig. d Karim Haddad, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 164521919
Prospero autumnale, photographed by Duarte Frade
fig. e Duarte Frade, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 161223403
Prospero autumnale, photographed by Pavel Kacl
fig. f Pavel Kacl, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 160688895
Prospero autumnale, photographed by Duarte Frade
fig. g Duarte Frade, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 160735267
Prospero autumnale, photographed by Pavel Kacl
fig. h Pavel Kacl, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 160120850

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 30 botanical countries

Regions where Prospero autumnale is native: Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Cyprus, East Aegean Is., Lebanon-Syria, North Caucasus, Palestine, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, Albania, Baleares, Bulgaria, Corse, France, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Kriti, Krym, NW. Balkan Pen., Portugal, Romania, Sardegna, Sicilia, Spain, Türkiye-in-Europe, Ukraine AlgeriaLibyaMoroccoTunisiaCyprusEast Aegean Is.Lebanon-SyriaNorth CaucasusPalestineTranscaucasusTürkiyeAlbaniaBulgariaCorseFranceGreeceHungaryItalyKritiKrymNW. Balkan Pen.PortugalRomaniaSiciliaSpainTürkiye-in-EuropeUkraine BalearesSardegna
Native distribution of Prospero autumnale, 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
Baleares BAL
Bulgaria BUL
Corse COR
France FRA
Great Britain GRB
Greece GRC
Hungary HUN
Italy ITA
Kriti KRI
Krym KRY
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Portugal POR
Romania ROM
Sardegna SAR
Sicilia SIC
Spain SPA
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
Ukraine UKR
Cyprus CYP ASIA-TEMPERATE
East Aegean Is. EAI
Lebanon-Syria LBS
North Caucasus NCS
Palestine PAL
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Libya LBY
Morocco MOR
Tunisia TUN

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 886 in flower of 1,026 examined

Peak flowering in Sep. Each bar is the share of Prospero autumnale 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. 886 of 1,026 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. One month has fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for it. 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 -2.3 °C 4.0 °C 11.0 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 19.3 °C 26.6 °C 32.5 °C
Annual rainfall 504 mm 789 mm 1,296 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 3 mm 96 mm 194 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 1,943 research-grade observations of Prospero autumnale 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 30 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.

  • Anthericum autumnale (L.) Scop.
  • Genlisa autumnalis (L.) Raf.
  • Hyacinthus autumnalis (L.) E.H.L.Krause
  • Ornithogalum autumnale (L.) Lam.
  • Prospero cyrenaicum (Pamp.) Speta
  • Prospero holzmannium (Heldr.) Speta
  • Prospero pulchellum (Munby) Speta
  • Prospero scythicum (Kleopow) Speta
  • Scilla autumnalis L.
  • Scilla autumnalis f. albiflora Pamp.
  • Scilla autumnalis f. dumetorum Balansa ex Baker
  • Scilla autumnalis subsp. latifolia Iatroú & Kit Tan
  • Scilla autumnalis var. corsica (Boullu) Nyman
  • Scilla autumnalis var. cyrenaica Pamp.
  • Scilla autumnalis var. gallica (Tod.) Nyman
  • Scilla autumnalis var. gracillima Batt.
  • Scilla autumnalis var. longipes Batt.
  • Scilla autumnalis var. pulchella (Munby) Batt.
  • Scilla autumnalis var. purpurascens Priszter
  • Scilla autumnalis var. racemosa (Balansa ex Baker) Asch. & Graebn.
  • Scilla cyrenaica (Pamp.) Bartolo, Brullo, Pavone & Terrasi
  • Scilla dumetorum Balansa ex Baker
  • Scilla gallica Tod.
  • Scilla holzmannia Heldr.

and 6 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.