Rhinanthus major (European yellow rattle)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Rhinanthus major, photographed by Нурхайдарова Татьяна — fig. a Нурхайдарова Татьяна, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-11 / obs. 205187766

Rhinanthus major, photographed by Aleksei Baushev — fig. b Aleksei Baushev, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205251173

Rhinanthus major, photographed by Michel Langeveld — fig. d Michel Langeveld, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200540660

Rhinanthus major, photographed by Morten Rosenvold Villadsen — fig. g Morten Rosenvold Villadsen, CC0 1.0 / obs. 155349354

Rhinanthus major, photographed by Oleg Kosterin — fig. h Oleg Kosterin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 153571625

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 43 botanical countries

Native distribution of Rhinanthus major, 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
Albania	ALB	EUROPE
Austria	AUT
Baltic States	BLT
Belarus	BLR
Belgium	BGM
Bulgaria	BUL
Central European Russia	RUC
Czechia-Slovakia	CZE
Denmark	DEN
East European Russia	RUE
Finland	FIN
France	FRA
Germany	GER
Great Britain	GRB
Hungary	HUN
Italy	ITA
Krym	KRY
Netherlands	NET
North European Russia	RUN
Northwest European Russia	RUW
Norway	NOR
NW. Balkan Pen.	YUG
Poland	POL
Romania	ROM
South European Russia	RUS
Sweden	SWE
Switzerland	SWI
Türkiye-in-Europe	TUE
Ukraine	UKR
Altay	ALT	ASIA-TEMPERATE
Buryatiya	BRY
Chita	CTA
Iran	IRN
Irkutsk	IRK
Kazakhstan	KAZ
Krasnoyarsk	KRA
Mongolia	MON
North Caucasus	NCS
Transcaucasus	TCS
Türkiye	TUR
Tuva	TVA
West Siberia	WSB
Yakutiya	YAK

Not drawn on the map: Great Britain. 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 343 in flower of 363 examined

97%

95%

96%

93%

100%

Proportion of examined Rhinanthus major in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	0	1	too few examined
Feb	0	0	too few examined
Mar	0	0	too few examined
Apr	2	2	too few examined
May	31	32	97%	84% to 99%
Jun	99	104	95%	89% to 98%
Jul	129	135	96%	91% to 98%
Aug	68	73	93%	85% to 97%
Sep	13	13	100%	77% to 100%
Oct	1	3	too few examined
Nov	0	0	too few examined
Dec	0	0	too few examined

Peak flowering in Sep. Each bar is the share of Rhinanthus major 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. 343 of 363 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 89 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 aestivalis N.W.Zinger
Alectorolophus alectorolophus Sterneck
Alectorolophus angustifolius D.Dietr.
Alectorolophus apterus (Fr.) Ostenf.
Alectorolophus arenarius Borbás ex Behrend. & Sterneck
Alectorolophus aristatus Gremli
Alectorolophus bosniacus Behrendsen
Alectorolophus grandiflorus Wallr.
Alectorolophus heribaudii (Chabert) Dörfl.
Alectorolophus major (L.) Rchb.
Alectorolophus major var. alpestris Wimm. & Grab.
Alectorolophus major var. angustifolius Wimm. & Grab.
Alectorolophus major var. bosnensis Behrendsen & Sterneck
Alectorolophus montanus (Saut.) Fritsch
Alectorolophus serotinus Schönh.
Alectorolophus serotinus subsp. vernalis (N.W.Zinger) Hyl.
Alectorolophus vernalis N.W.Zinger
Fistularia alectorolophus Wettst.
Fistularia angustifolia (C.C.Gmel.) Wettst.
Fistularia major (L.) Wettst.
Fistularia pubescens Wettst.
Fistularia serotina (Schönh.) Wettst.
Rhinanthus aestivalis (N.W.Zinger) Schischk. & Serg.
Rhinanthus alpestris Steud.

and 65 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.