Sabulina rubella(Wahlenb.) Dillenb. & Kadereit

beautiful sandwort

WFO wfo-1200115305 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Sabulina rubella, photographed by Syd Cannings
fig. a Syd Cannings, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-07-01 / obs. 140277851

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
Smithsonian, US National Herbarium
Accession
US 3657157
Filed as
Sabulina rubella (Wahlenb.) Dillenb. & Kadereit
Det. by
not recorded on this sheet
Collected
R. G. Stolze 1965-06-30
Origin
US
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC0 1.0)

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 43 botanical countries

Regions where Sabulina rubella is native: Buryatiya, Chita, Kamchatka, Krasnoyarsk, Magadan, West Siberia, Yakutiya, Finland, Føroyar, Great Britain, Iceland, North European Russia, Norway, Svalbard, Sweden, Alaska, Alberta, Aleutian Is., Arizona, British Columbia, California, Colorado, Greenland, Idaho, Labrador, Maine, Manitoba, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Newfoundland, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Ontario, Oregon, Québec, Saskatchewan, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Washington, Wyoming, Yukon BuryatiyaChitaKamchatkaKrasnoyarskMagadanWest SiberiaYakutiyaFinlandIcelandNorth European RussiaNorwaySvalbardSwedenAlaskaAlbertaArizonaBritish ColumbiaCaliforniaColoradoGreenlandIdahoLabradorMaineManitobaMontanaNevadaNew MexicoNewfoundlandNorthwest TerritoriesNunavutOntarioOregonQuébecSaskatchewanSouth DakotaUtahVermontWashingtonWyomingYukon Føroyar
Native distribution of Sabulina rubella, 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
Arizona ARI
British Columbia BRC
California CAL
Colorado COL
Greenland GNL
Idaho IDA
Labrador LAB
Maine MAI
Manitoba MAN
Montana MNT
Nevada NEV
New Mexico NWM
Newfoundland NFL
Northwest Territories NWT
Nunavut NUN
Ontario ONT
Oregon ORE
Québec QUE
Saskatchewan SAS
South Dakota SDA
Utah UTA
Vermont VER
Washington WAS
Wyoming WYO
Yukon YUK
Finland FIN EUROPE
Føroyar FOR
Great Britain GRB
Iceland ICE
North European Russia RUN
Norway NOR
Svalbard SVA
Sweden SWE
Buryatiya BRY ASIA-TEMPERATE
Chita CTA
Kamchatka KAM
Krasnoyarsk KRA
Magadan MAG
West Siberia WSB
Yakutiya YAK

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 72 in flower of 80 examined

Proportion of examined Sabulina rubella 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 1 1 too few examined
Jun 26 26 100% 87% to 100%
Jul 36 39 92% 80% to 97%
Aug 7 10 70% 40% to 89%
Sep 1 3 too few examined
Oct 1 1 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 Sabulina rubella 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. 72 of 80 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 9 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 447 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -33.9 °C -19.2 °C -3.4 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 6.6 °C 16.2 °C 22.2 °C
Annual rainfall 277 mm 833 mm 2,527 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 32 mm 105 mm 395 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 447 research-grade observations of Sabulina rubella 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 30 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.

  • Alsine hirta var. rubella (Wahlenb.) Hartm.
  • Alsine rubella Wahlenb.
  • Alsine verna var. glacialis Fenzl
  • Alsine verna var. propinqua (Richardson) Lange
  • Alsinella rubella (Wahlenb.) Sw.
  • Alsinopsis propinqua (Richardson) Rydb.
  • Alsinopsis quadrivalvis (R.Br.) Rydb.
  • Arenaria aequicaulis A.Nelson
  • Arenaria cherlerifolia G.Don
  • Arenaria hirta var. pubescens Cham. & Schltdl.
  • Arenaria propinqua Richardson
  • Arenaria quadrivalvis R.Br.
  • Arenaria rubella (Wahlenb.) Sm.
  • Arenaria rubella f. epilis (Fernald) Polunin
  • Arenaria sulcata Willd. ex D.F.K.Schltdl.
  • Arenaria verna f. epilis Fernald
  • Arenaria verna var. aequicaulis A.Nelson
  • Arenaria verna var. propinqua (Richardson) Fernald
  • Arenaria verna var. pubescens (Cham. & Schltdl.) Fernald
  • Arenaria verna var. rubella (Wahlenb.) S.Watson
  • Minuartia propinqua (Richardson) House
  • Minuartia quadrivalvis (R.Br.) House
  • Minuartia rubella (Wahlenb.) Hiern
  • Minuartia rubella f. epilis (Fernald) J.Cay.

and 6 more.

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. USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol MIRU3. public domain. 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.