Prunus insititiaL.

WFO wfo-0001007422 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Prunus insititia, photographed by Stephen James McWilliam
fig. a Stephen James McWilliam, CC0 1.0 / 2020-08-05 / obs. 88375656
Prunus insititia, photographed by David Ashcroft
fig. b David Ashcroft, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 73069008
Prunus insititia, photographed by Aissa Djamel Filali
fig. c Aissa Djamel Filali, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 45218700
Prunus insititia, photographed by Jason Grant
fig. d Jason Grant, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 25159866
Prunus insititia, photographed by Karim Haddad
fig. e Karim Haddad, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 156230954
Prunus insititia, photographed by Naturalista
fig. f Naturalista, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 132475667
Prunus insititia, photographed by Naturalista
fig. g Naturalista, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 121833521
Prunus insititia, photographed by Joe Carmichael
fig. h Joe Carmichael, CC0 1.0 / obs. 53059314

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 4 botanical countries

Regions where Prunus insititia is native: Austria, France, Germany, Switzerland AustriaFranceGermanySwitzerland
Native distribution of Prunus insititia, 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
Austria AUT EUROPE
France FRA
Germany GER
Switzerland SWI

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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 133 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -6.1 °C 1.3 °C 3.6 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 18.0 °C 20.8 °C 30.1 °C
Annual rainfall 539 mm 790 mm 1,346 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 72 mm 146 mm 248 mm

It is found where winters bring hard 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 133 research-grade observations of Prunus insititia 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.

Also published as 79 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.

  • Druparia insititia Clairv.
  • Prunus agrestis Jord. & Fourr.
  • Prunus aloocha Royle
  • Prunus cinerascens Lamotte
  • Prunus communis prol. porcorum Clavaud
  • Prunus communis subsp. insititia (L.) Syme
  • Prunus communis var. insititia (L.) Huds.
  • Prunus damascena Dierb.
  • Prunus damascena Ehrh.
  • Prunus damascena unranked chlorocarpa Dierb.
  • Prunus damascena unranked cyanocarpa Dierb.
  • Prunus damascena unranked haemotocarpa Dierb.
  • Prunus damascena unranked mera Poit. & Turpin
  • Prunus damascena unranked xanthocarpa Dierb.
  • Prunus damascena var. hispanica M.Roem.
  • Prunus damascena var. hungarica (L.) D.Rivera
  • Prunus damascena var. praecox (L.) D.Rivera
  • Prunus damsonia M.Roem.
  • Prunus desvauxii Boreau
  • Prunus discreta (Rouy & E.G.Camus) A.W.Hill
  • Prunus domestica f. pomariorum (Boutigny) C.K.Schneid.
  • Prunus domestica f. subsylvestris (Boutigny) C.K.Schneid.
  • Prunus domestica subsp. cerea (L.) H.L.Werneck
  • Prunus domestica subsp. insititia (L.) Bonnier & Layens

and 55 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.