Reichardia tingitana(L.) Roth

False sowthistlefalse sowthistle

WFO wfo-0000137866 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Reichardia tingitana, photographed by Kym Nicolson
fig. a Kym Nicolson, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-02 / obs. 194251563
Reichardia tingitana, photographed by Santiago Martín-Bravo
fig. b Santiago Martín-Bravo, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 189452500
Reichardia tingitana, photographed by Kym Nicolson
fig. c Kym Nicolson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 180404452
Reichardia tingitana, photographed by T. Hammer
fig. d T. Hammer, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 184815741
Reichardia tingitana, photographed by T. Hammer
fig. e T. Hammer, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 183884390
Reichardia tingitana, photographed by Nina Kerr
fig. f Nina Kerr, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 168479479
Reichardia tingitana, photographed by Kym Nicolson
fig. g Kym Nicolson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 166180110
Reichardia tingitana, photographed by T. Hammer
fig. h T. Hammer, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 163718097

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
Smithsonian, US National Herbarium
Accession
US 2656625
Filed as
Reichardia tingitana (L.) Roth
Det. by
Wagner, W. L., (BOT), Smithsonian Institution - National Museum of Natural History (UNITED STATES)
Collected
S. Furmidge 1933-03-25
Origin
US
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC0 1.0)

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 32 botanical countries

Regions where Reichardia tingitana is native: Algeria, Canary Is., Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Libya, Morocco, Socotra, Sudan-South Sudan, Tanzania, Tunisia, Afghanistan, Cyprus, Gulf States, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon-Syria, Oman, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Sinai, Yemen, India, Pakistan, Baleares, Italy, Kriti, Sicilia, Spain AlgeriaDjiboutiEgyptEritreaEthiopiaKenyaLibyaMoroccoSudan-South SudanTanzaniaTunisiaAfghanistanCyprusGulf StatesIranIraqKuwaitLebanon-SyriaOmanPalestineSaudi ArabiaSinaiYemenIndiaPakistanItalyKritiSiciliaSpain Canary Is.Baleares
Native distribution of Reichardia tingitana, 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
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Canary Is. CNY
Djibouti DJI
Egypt EGY
Eritrea ERI
Ethiopia ETH
Kenya KEN
Libya LBY
Morocco MOR
Socotra SOC
Sudan-South Sudan SUD
Tanzania TAN
Tunisia TUN
Afghanistan AFG ASIA-TEMPERATE
Cyprus CYP
Gulf States GST
Iran IRN
Iraq IRQ
Kuwait KUW
Lebanon-Syria LBS
Oman OMA
Palestine PAL
Saudi Arabia SAU
Sinai SIN
Yemen YEM
Baleares BAL EUROPE
Italy ITA
Kriti KRI
Sicilia SIC
Spain SPA
India IND ASIA-TROPICAL
Pakistan PAK

Not drawn on the map: Socotra. 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 369 in flower of 385 examined

Peak flowering in May. Each bar is the share of Reichardia tingitana 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. 369 of 385 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 1,959 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 3.6 °C 9.7 °C 16.4 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 22.5 °C 27.6 °C 33.8 °C
Annual rainfall 151 mm 353 mm 713 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 2 mm 29 mm 62 mm

It is found where winters are cool but frost is light or absent. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,959 research-grade observations of Reichardia tingitana 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 20 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.

  • Picridium hispanicum Poir.
  • Picridium orientale (L.) Desf.
  • Picridium orientale DC.
  • Picridium tingitanum (L.) DC.
  • Picridium tingitanum Desf.
  • Picridium tingitanum subsp. discolor (Pomel) Batt.
  • Picridium tingitanum subsp. tingitanum
  • Picridium tingitanum var. maritimum Ball
  • Picridium tingitanum var. maroccanum Ball
  • Picridium tingitanum var. saharae (Pomel) Batt.
  • Picridium tingitanum var. tingitanum
  • Picridium vulgare subsp. maritimum (Ball) Batt.
  • Picridium vulgare var. serioides Maire
  • Reichardia arabica Fiori
  • Reichardia orientalis Hochr.
  • Reichardia tingitana var. arabica (Hochst.) Asch. & Schweinf.
  • Reichardia tingitana var. mauritii Sennen
  • Reichardia tingitana var. orientalis (L.) Pamp.
  • Reichardia tingitana var. pinnatifida (Lag.) Pau & Font Quer
  • Sonchus tingitanus Lam.

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.