Rhamnus saxatilisJacq.

rock buckthorn

WFO wfo-0000459995 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Rhamnus saxatilis, photographed by Yves Bas
fig. a Yves Bas, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-05 / obs. 203746556
Rhamnus saxatilis, photographed by Patrick Hacker
fig. b Patrick Hacker, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 134574920
Rhamnus saxatilis, photographed by Emanuele Santarelli
fig. c Emanuele Santarelli, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 129326406
Rhamnus saxatilis, photographed by carnifex
fig. d carnifex, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 86999566
Rhamnus saxatilis, photographed by Yves Bas
fig. e Yves Bas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 67417010
Rhamnus saxatilis, photographed by Emanuele Santarelli
fig. f Emanuele Santarelli, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 49941681
Rhamnus saxatilis, photographed by Julien Renoult
fig. g Julien Renoult, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 38075724
Rhamnus saxatilis, photographed by Christian Berg
fig. h Christian Berg, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 79841198

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
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
02696774
Filed as
Rhamnus saxatilis Jacq.
Det. by
not recorded on this sheet
Collected
not recorded
Origin
not recorded
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 13 botanical countries

Regions where Rhamnus saxatilis is native: Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Czechia-Slovakia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, NW. Balkan Pen., Romania, Spain, Switzerland AlbaniaAustriaBulgariaCzechia-SlovakiaFranceGermanyGreeceHungaryItalyNW. Balkan Pen.RomaniaSpainSwitzerland
Native distribution of Rhamnus saxatilis, 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
Albania ALB EUROPE
Austria AUT
Bulgaria BUL
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
France FRA
Germany GER
Greece GRC
Hungary HUN
Italy ITA
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Romania ROM
Spain SPA
Switzerland SWI

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 402 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -7.2 °C -3.4 °C 2.2 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 20.8 °C 25.2 °C 29.2 °C
Annual rainfall 541 mm 878 mm 1,872 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 89 mm 137 mm 313 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 402 research-grade observations of Rhamnus saxatilis 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 11 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.

  • Cervispina saxatilis Fourr.
  • Frangula saxatilis Cramer
  • Girtanneria saxatilis Neck.
  • Lithoplis saxatilis Raf.
  • Rhamnus baphicoccus Rothm.
  • Rhamnus cardiocarpa Willd. ex Schult.
  • Rhamnus carniolica Kern.
  • Rhamnus dumosa hort. ex Dippel
  • Rhamnus longifolia Mill.
  • Rhamnus tinctoria Waldst. & Kit.
  • Rhamnus transsilvanica Schur

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.