Quercus cocciferaL.

Kermes Oak

WFO wfo-0000290191 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Quercus coccifera, photographed by Rafael Medina
fig. a Rafael Medina, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-22 / obs. 199705202
Quercus coccifera, photographed by David Delon
fig. b David Delon, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 198171557
Quercus coccifera, photographed by Quentin Groom
fig. c Quentin Groom, CC0 1.0 / obs. 197464231
Quercus coccifera, photographed by Duarte Frade
fig. d Duarte Frade, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195651655
Quercus coccifera, photographed by Elizabete Marchante
fig. e Elizabete Marchante, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 192295285
Quercus coccifera, photographed by Yves Bas
fig. f Yves Bas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 190837187
Quercus coccifera, photographed by Yves Bas
fig. g Yves Bas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 190836834
Quercus coccifera, photographed by mchaquis
fig. h mchaquis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 190403428

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 Quercus coccifera is native: Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Cyprus, East Aegean Is., Lebanon-Syria, Palestine, Türkiye, Albania, Baleares, Bulgaria, France, Greece, Italy, Kriti, NW. Balkan Pen., Portugal, Sardegna, Sicilia, Spain, Türkiye-in-Europe AlgeriaLibyaMoroccoTunisiaCyprusEast Aegean Is.Lebanon-SyriaPalestineTürkiyeAlbaniaBulgariaFranceGreeceItalyKritiNW. Balkan Pen.PortugalSiciliaSpainTürkiye-in-Europe BalearesSardegna
Native distribution of Quercus coccifera, 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
France FRA
Greece GRC
Italy ITA
Kriti KRI
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Portugal POR
Sardegna SAR
Sicilia SIC
Spain SPA
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
Cyprus CYP ASIA-TEMPERATE
East Aegean Is. EAI
Lebanon-Syria LBS
Palestine PAL
Türkiye TUR
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Libya LBY
Morocco MOR
Tunisia TUN

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 118 in flower of 1,073 examined

Peak flowering in Apr. Each bar is the share of Quercus coccifera 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. 118 of 1,073 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 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 2,002 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -0.6 °C 4.6 °C 10.5 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 23.5 °C 28.2 °C 32.5 °C
Annual rainfall 425 mm 685 mm 1,170 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 5 mm 49 mm 131 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 2,002 research-grade observations of Quercus coccifera 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 86 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.

  • Ilex aculeata Garsault
  • Quercus aquifolia Kotschy ex A.DC.
  • Quercus arcuata Kotschy ex A.DC.
  • Quercus brachybalanos Kotschy ex A.DC.
  • Quercus calliprinos Webb
  • Quercus calliprinos var. arcuata Kotschy ex A.DC.
  • Quercus calliprinos var. brachybalanos (Kotschy ex A.DC.) A.DC.
  • Quercus calliprinos var. consobrina A.DC.
  • Quercus calliprinos var. dipsacina Kotschy
  • Quercus calliprinos var. dispar Kotschy
  • Quercus calliprinos var. eigii A.Camus
  • Quercus calliprinos var. eucalliprinos A.DC.
  • Quercus calliprinos var. fenzlii (Kotschy) A.Camus
  • Quercus calliprinos var. inops (Kotschy ex A.DC.) A.DC.
  • Quercus calliprinos var. integrifolia (Boiss.) A.Camus
  • Quercus calliprinos var. leptolepis A.DC.
  • Quercus calliprinos var. pachybalanos A.DC.
  • Quercus calliprinos var. palaestina (Kotschy) Zohary
  • Quercus calliprinos var. palaestrino (Kotschy) Zohary
  • Quercus calliprinos var. puberula Zohary
  • Quercus calliprinos var. recurvans (Kotschy ex A.DC.) A.Camus
  • Quercus calliprinos var. rigida (Willd.) A.DC.
  • Quercus calliprinos var. subaquifolia A.Camus
  • Quercus calliprinos var. subglobosa Zohary

and 62 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. 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.