Pterocephalus plumosus(L.) Coult.

WFO wfo-0000396718 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 3 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 3 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.

Pterocephalus plumosus, photographed by Eleftherios Katsillis
fig. a Eleftherios Katsillis, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-05-07 / obs. 127961189
Pterocephalus plumosus, photographed by Eleftherios Katsillis
fig. b Eleftherios Katsillis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 126966528
Pterocephalus plumosus, photographed by Yves Bas
fig. c Yves Bas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 192424336
Pterocephalus plumosus, photographed by Eleftherios Katsillis
fig. d Eleftherios Katsillis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 127961275
Pterocephalus plumosus, photographed by Eleftherios Katsillis
fig. e Eleftherios Katsillis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 126966568
Pterocephalus plumosus, photographed by Eleftherios Katsillis
fig. f Eleftherios Katsillis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 126966640
Pterocephalus plumosus, photographed by Yves Bas
fig. g Yves Bas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 192424566
Pterocephalus plumosus, photographed by Yves Bas
fig. h Yves Bas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 192424463

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
K000779129
Filed as
Pterocephalus plumosus (L.) Coult.
Det. by
Ferguson, I.K.
Collected
Bornmüller, J. 1893-05-28
Origin
IQ
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 18 botanical countries

Regions where Pterocephalus plumosus is native: Egypt, East Aegean Is., Iran, Iraq, Lebanon-Syria, North Caucasus, Palestine, Sinai, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, Turkmenistan, Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Kriti, Krym, NW. Balkan Pen., Türkiye-in-Europe EgyptEast Aegean Is.IranIraqLebanon-SyriaNorth CaucasusPalestineSinaiTranscaucasusTürkiyeTurkmenistanAlbaniaBulgariaGreeceKritiKrymNW. Balkan Pen.Türkiye-in-Europe
Native distribution of Pterocephalus plumosus, 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
East Aegean Is. EAI ASIA-TEMPERATE
Iran IRN
Iraq IRQ
Lebanon-Syria LBS
North Caucasus NCS
Palestine PAL
Sinai SIN
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR
Turkmenistan TKM
Albania ALB EUROPE
Bulgaria BUL
Greece GRC
Kriti KRI
Krym KRY
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
Egypt EGY AFRICA

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 153 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -4.7 °C 2.0 °C 10.2 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 24.3 °C 28.1 °C 33.3 °C
Annual rainfall 418 mm 719 mm 988 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 2 mm 17 mm 177 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 153 research-grade observations of Pterocephalus plumosus 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 14 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.

  • Cephalaria diandra Roem. & Schult.
  • Cephalaria willichii Roem. & Schult.
  • Dipsacus plumosus (L.) K.Koch
  • Euptilia cretica Raf.
  • Knautia plumosa L.
  • Pterocephalus adenophorus Gand.
  • Pterocephalus caramanicus Boiss. & Heldr.
  • Pterocephalus marcescens Moench
  • Pterocephalus papposus Coult.
  • Pterocephalus vaillantii Lag.
  • Scabiosa papposa L.
  • Scabiosa plumosa (L.) Sm.
  • Scabiosa willichii Link
  • Trichera willichii Schult. & Schult.f.

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.