Prunus spinosaL.

Blackthorn

WFO wfo-0001007437 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Prunus spinosa, photographed by Юрий Данилевский (Yuriy Danilevsky)
fig. a Юрий Данилевский (Yuriy Danilevsky), CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-12 / obs. 205757993
Prunus spinosa, photographed by Юрий Данилевский (Yuriy Danilevsky)
fig. b Юрий Данилевский (Yuriy Danilevsky), CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205708043
Prunus spinosa, photographed by Stephen James McWilliam
fig. c Stephen James McWilliam, CC0 1.0 / obs. 201562427
Prunus spinosa, photographed by Jason Grant
fig. d Jason Grant, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200563348
Prunus spinosa, photographed by Stephen James McWilliam
fig. e Stephen James McWilliam, CC0 1.0 / obs. 202451822
Prunus spinosa, photographed by Lisa Phipps
fig. f Lisa Phipps, CC0 1.0 / obs. 205190550
Prunus spinosa, photographed by Николай Соболев
fig. g Николай Соболев, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201232686
Prunus spinosa, photographed by Татьяна Горбушина
fig. h Татьяна Горбушина, CC0 1.0 / obs. 203526586

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.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 2,752 observations

Peak flowering in Apr, from 2,752 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 215 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 spinosa Clairv.
  • Prunus acacia Crantz ex Poir.
  • Prunus acacia Crantz
  • Prunus acacia-germanica Crantz
  • Prunus amygdaliformis Pau
  • Prunus communis Bab.
  • Prunus communis prol. depressa Clavaud
  • Prunus communis prol. erythrocalyx Clavaud
  • Prunus communis prol. latiflora Clavaud
  • Prunus communis prol. oxypyrena Clavaud
  • Prunus communis prol. pubescens Clavaud
  • Prunus communis prol. subinermis Clavaud
  • Prunus communis subsp. spinosa (L.) Syme
  • Prunus communis subvar. cinerea Clavaud
  • Prunus communis subvar. ellipsoides Clavaud
  • Prunus communis subvar. stenopetala (Ducommun) Clavaud
  • Prunus communis unranked coronata Clavaud
  • Prunus communis unranked depressa Clavaud
  • Prunus communis unranked erythrocalyx Clavaud
  • Prunus communis unranked foecundissima Clavaud
  • Prunus communis unranked latiflora Clavaud
  • Prunus communis unranked lucida Clavaud
  • Prunus communis unranked oxypyrena Clavaud
  • Prunus communis unranked pubescens Clavaud

and 191 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.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.