Rhinanthus groenlandicusChabert

WFO wfo-0001138515 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Rhinanthus groenlandicus, photographed by Ellyne Geurts
fig. a Ellyne Geurts, CC0 1.0 / 2021-08-07 / obs. 165304877

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 28 botanical countries

Regions where Rhinanthus groenlandicus is native: Kamchatka, Finland, Føroyar, Great Britain, Iceland, Ireland, North European Russia, Norway, Sweden, Alaska, Alberta, Aleutian Is., British Columbia, Greenland, Labrador, Manitoba, New Brunswick, New Hampshire, New York, Newfoundland, Northwest Territories, Nova Scotia, Nunavut, Ontario, Oregon, Québec, Washington, Yukon KamchatkaFinlandIcelandIrelandNorth European RussiaNorwaySwedenAlaskaAlbertaBritish ColumbiaGreenlandLabradorManitobaNew BrunswickNew HampshireNew YorkNewfoundlandNorthwest TerritoriesNova ScotiaNunavutOntarioOregonQuébecWashingtonYukon Føroyar
Native distribution of Rhinanthus groenlandicus, 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
Alaska ASK NORTHERN AMERICA
Alberta ABT
Aleutian Is. ALU
British Columbia BRC
Greenland GNL
Labrador LAB
Manitoba MAN
New Brunswick NBR
New Hampshire NWH
New York NWY
Newfoundland NFL
Northwest Territories NWT
Nova Scotia NSC
Nunavut NUN
Ontario ONT
Oregon ORE
Québec QUE
Washington WAS
Yukon YUK
Finland FIN EUROPE
Føroyar FOR
Great Britain GRB
Iceland ICE
Ireland IRE
North European Russia RUN
Norway NOR
Sweden SWE
Kamchatka KAM ASIA-TEMPERATE

Not drawn on the map: Great Britain, Aleutian Is.. We hold no public-domain boundary for these regions, so they are 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 93 in flower of 104 examined

Proportion of examined Rhinanthus groenlandicus 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 0 0 too few examined
May 2 2 too few examined
Jun 13 13 100% 77% to 100%
Jul 46 49 94% 83% to 98%
Aug 31 33 94% 80% to 98%
Sep 1 7 14% 3% to 51%
Oct 0 0 too few examined
Nov 0 0 too few examined
Dec 0 0 too few examined

Peak flowering in Jun. Each bar is the share of Rhinanthus groenlandicus 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. 93 of 104 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 8 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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 893 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -25.5 °C -15.0 °C -7.4 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 15.0 °C 20.4 °C 23.5 °C
Annual rainfall 382 mm 611 mm 1,560 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 45 mm 78 mm 243 mm

It is found where winters are arctic. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 893 research-grade observations of Rhinanthus groenlandicus 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 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.

  • Alectorolophus arcticus Sterneck
  • Alectorolophus borealis Sterneck
  • Alectorolophus groenlandicus (Chabert) Ostenf.
  • Rhinanthus arcticus (Sterneck) Pennell
  • Rhinanthus borealis (Sterneck) Chabert
  • Rhinanthus minor subsp. borealis (Sterneck) Á.Löve
  • Rhinanthus minor subsp. groenlandicus (Chabert) Neuman
  • Rhinanthus oblongifolius Fernald

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.