Saussurea alpina(L.) DC.

WFO wfo-0000020195 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Saussurea alpina, photographed by Albin Larsson
fig. a Albin Larsson, CC0 1.0 / 2021-07-20 / obs. 183121435
Saussurea alpina, photographed by Wolfgang Jauch
fig. b Wolfgang Jauch, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 89317819
Saussurea alpina, photographed by Dmitriy Bochkov
fig. c Dmitriy Bochkov, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 58824514
Saussurea alpina, photographed by Dmitriy Bochkov
fig. d Dmitriy Bochkov, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 48379976
Saussurea alpina, photographed by Dmitriy Bochkov
fig. e Dmitriy Bochkov, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 57589500
Saussurea alpina, photographed by Haltiamieli
fig. f Haltiamieli, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 151620433
Saussurea alpina, photographed by Dag Endresen
fig. g Dag Endresen, CC0 1.0 / obs. 88876566
Saussurea alpina, photographed by nina_nesterova
fig. h nina_nesterova, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 138722409

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 32 botanical countries

Regions where Saussurea alpina is native: Altay, Buryatiya, Chita, Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, Mongolia, Tadzhikistan, Tuva, West Siberia, Xinjiang, Yakutiya, Austria, Baltic States, Czechia-Slovakia, East European Russia, Finland, Føroyar, France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, North European Russia, Northwest European Russia, Norway, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine AltayBuryatiyaChitaIrkutskKrasnoyarskMongoliaTadzhikistanTuvaWest SiberiaXinjiangYakutiyaAustriaBaltic StatesCzechia-SlovakiaEast European RussiaFinlandFranceGermanyIrelandItalyNorth European RussiaNorthwest European RussiaNorwayNW. Balkan Pen.PolandRomaniaSpainSwedenSwitzerlandUkraine Føroyar
Native distribution of Saussurea alpina, 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
Austria AUT EUROPE
Baltic States BLT
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
East European Russia RUE
Finland FIN
Føroyar FOR
France FRA
Germany GER
Great Britain GRB
Ireland IRE
Italy ITA
North European Russia RUN
Northwest European Russia RUW
Norway NOR
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Romania ROM
Spain SPA
Sweden SWE
Switzerland SWI
Ukraine UKR
Altay ALT ASIA-TEMPERATE
Buryatiya BRY
Chita CTA
Irkutsk IRK
Krasnoyarsk KRA
Mongolia MON
Tadzhikistan TZK
Tuva TVA
West Siberia WSB
Xinjiang CHX
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 52 in flower of 70 examined

Peak flowering in Aug. Each bar is the share of Saussurea alpina 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. 52 of 70 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 10 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 816 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -25.7 °C -14.5 °C -6.5 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 10.7 °C 14.1 °C 17.8 °C
Annual rainfall 622 mm 1,009 mm 2,115 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 93 mm 159 mm 358 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 816 research-grade observations of Saussurea alpina 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 14 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.

  • Centaurea saussurea E.H.L.Krause
  • Cirsium alpinum All.
  • Cnicus alpinus Loisel.
  • Saussurea alpina subsp. alpina
  • Saussurea alpina subsp. macrophylla (Saut.) Nyman
  • Saussurea alpina var. alpina
  • Saussurea lapatifolia H.Karst.
  • Saussurea ledebouri Herder
  • Saussurea ledebouri var. ledebouri
  • Saussurea macrophylla Saut.
  • Saussurea pohlei Gand.
  • Saussurea pujolica Costa
  • Serratula alpina L.
  • Serratula alpina var. alpina

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.