Rhinanthus alectorolophus (European yellow rattle)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Rhinanthus alectorolophus, photographed by Marco Mussita — fig. a Marco Mussita, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-10 / obs. 205761366

Rhinanthus alectorolophus, photographed by Yann Kemper — fig. b Yann Kemper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 204129826

Rhinanthus alectorolophus, photographed by Tobias Schönberg — fig. c Tobias Schönberg, CC0 1.0 / obs. 203016781

Rhinanthus alectorolophus, photographed by Norrland — fig. e Norrland, CC0 1.0 / obs. 199724084

Rhinanthus alectorolophus, photographed by Attila Oláh — fig. f Attila Oláh, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 198603247

Rhinanthus alectorolophus, photographed by Andreas Stiller — fig. g Andreas Stiller, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 197483373

Rhinanthus alectorolophus, photographed by Elvira de Lange — fig. h Elvira de Lange, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 196845473

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 16 botanical countries

Native distribution of Rhinanthus alectorolophus, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Austria	AUT	EUROPE
Belarus	BLR
Belgium	BGM
Central European Russia	RUC
Czechia-Slovakia	CZE
Finland	FIN
France	FRA
Germany	GER
Hungary	HUN
Italy	ITA
Netherlands	NET
NW. Balkan Pen.	YUG
Poland	POL
Romania	ROM
Switzerland	SWI
Ukraine	UKR

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 726 in flower of 741 examined

93%

99%

95%

100%

Proportion of examined Rhinanthus alectorolophus in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	0	0	too few examined
Feb	0	0	too few examined
Mar	0	0	too few examined
Apr	40	43	93%	81% to 98%
May	267	269	99%	97% to 100%
Jun	268	272	99%	96% to 99%
Jul	112	118	95%	89% to 98%
Aug	39	39	100%	91% to 100%
Sep	0	0	too few examined
Oct	0	0	too few examined
Nov	0	0	too few examined
Dec	0	0	too few examined

Peak flowering in Aug. Each bar is the share of Rhinanthus alectorolophus 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. 726 of 741 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 7 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. 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.

Also published as 37 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.

Alectorolophus arvensis Semler
Alectorolophus ellipticus (Hausskn.) Sterneck
Alectorolophus facchinii (Chabert) Sterneck
Alectorolophus grandiflorus var. hirsutus (Lam.) Rouy
Alectorolophus grandiflorus var. modestus (Chabert) Rouy
Alectorolophus grandiflorus var. pubens Wallr.
Alectorolophus grandiflorus var. wallrothii Rouy
Alectorolophus hirsutus (Lam.) All.
Alectorolophus kerneri Sterneck
Alectorolophus modestus Sterneck
Alectorolophus patulus Sterneck
Alectorolophus semleri Sterneck
Mimulus alectorolophus Scop.
Rhinanthus alectorolophus subsp. arvensis (Semler) Schinz & Thell.
Rhinanthus alectorolophus subsp. buccalis (Wallr.) Schinz & Thell.
Rhinanthus alectorolophus subsp. facchinii (Chabert) P.Fourn.
Rhinanthus alectorolophus subsp. kerneri (Sterneck) Soó
Rhinanthus alectorolophus subsp. kerneri P.Fourn.
Rhinanthus alectorolophus subsp. medius Schinz & Thell.
Rhinanthus alectorolophus subsp. modestus (Chabert) P.Fourn.
Rhinanthus alectorolophus subsp. patulus (Sterneck) Soó
Rhinanthus alectorolophus subvar. patulus (v.Sterneck) Hartl
Rhinanthus alectorolophus var. modestus Chabert
Rhinanthus alectorolophus var. wallrothii (Rouy) Lambinon

and 13 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
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.