Rhamnus alpinaL.

WFO wfo-0000462508 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Rhamnus alpina, photographed by veroalsace
fig. a veroalsace, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-06-11 / obs. 205811438
Rhamnus alpina, photographed by Eric Toro Delgado
fig. b Eric Toro Delgado, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 152194576
Rhamnus alpina, photographed by Rafael Medina
fig. c Rafael Medina, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 150058613
Rhamnus alpina, photographed by Rafael Medina
fig. d Rafael Medina, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 149442993
Rhamnus alpina, photographed by Thomas Koffel
fig. e Thomas Koffel, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 150127551
Rhamnus alpina, photographed by Rafael Medina
fig. f Rafael Medina, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 89983445
Rhamnus alpina, photographed by Rafael Medina
fig. g Rafael Medina, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 89157531
Rhamnus alpina, photographed by Rafael Medina
fig. h Rafael Medina, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 89148885

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 8 botanical countries

Regions where Rhamnus alpina is native: Algeria, Morocco, Corse, France, Italy, Sardegna, Spain, Switzerland AlgeriaMoroccoCorseFranceItalySpainSwitzerland Sardegna
Native distribution of Rhamnus alpina, 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
Corse COR EUROPE
France FRA
Italy ITA
Sardegna SAR
Spain SPA
Switzerland SWI
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Morocco MOR

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 610 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -10.9 °C -5.1 °C 0.5 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 16.9 °C 20.0 °C 25.6 °C
Annual rainfall 730 mm 1,331 mm 2,035 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 102 mm 211 mm 371 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 610 research-grade observations of Rhamnus alpina 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 8 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.

  • Alaternus alpinus Moench
  • Atadinus alpinus Raf.
  • Frangula latifolia Mill.
  • Oreoherzogia alpina (L.) W.Vent
  • Rhamnus alpina f. brevifolia (Lange) Rivas Mart. & J.M.Pizarro
  • Rhamnus alpina var. brevifolia Lange
  • Rhamnus imeretia hort. ex Dippel
  • Rhamnus kabylica (Maire) Grubov

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.