Saxifraga hypnoidesL.

WFO wfo-0000494294 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Saxifraga hypnoides, photographed by Petr Harant
fig. a Petr Harant, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-10 / obs. 204933929
Saxifraga hypnoides, photographed by Jane Concannon
fig. b Jane Concannon, CC0 1.0 / obs. 196367313
Saxifraga hypnoides, photographed by pete_gateley
fig. c pete_gateley, CC0 1.0 / obs. 151665208
Saxifraga hypnoides, photographed by Jamie O'Neill
fig. d Jamie O'Neill, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199041986
Saxifraga hypnoides, photographed by Terry Instone
fig. e Terry Instone, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 143655074
Saxifraga hypnoides, photographed by Karen Fry
fig. f Karen Fry, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 131347309
Saxifraga hypnoides, photographed by Terry Instone
fig. g Terry Instone, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 129559013
Saxifraga hypnoides, photographed by kitbeard
fig. h kitbeard, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 19549883

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 7 botanical countries

Regions where Saxifraga hypnoides is native: Belgium, Føroyar, France, Great Britain, Iceland, Ireland, Norway BelgiumFranceIcelandIrelandNorway Føroyar
Native distribution of Saxifraga hypnoides, 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
Belgium BGM EUROPE
Føroyar FOR
France FRA
Great Britain GRB
Iceland ICE
Ireland IRE
Norway NOR

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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 280 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -6.9 °C -0.9 °C 2.9 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 9.9 °C 15.5 °C 18.5 °C
Annual rainfall 960 mm 1,707 mm 3,202 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 166 mm 292 mm 556 mm

It is found where winters bring hard frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 280 research-grade observations of Saxifraga hypnoides 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.

Also published as 70 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.

  • Chondrosea intermedia Haw.
  • Evaiezoa hirta Raf.
  • Hexaphoma viscida Raf.
  • Hirculus gracilis (Sternb. ex Ser.) Losinsk.
  • Muscaria basaitica Jord. & Fourr.
  • Muscaria helviensis Jord. & Fourr.
  • Muscaria hypnoides (L.) Jord. & Fourr.
  • Muscaria indivisa Jord. & Fourr.
  • Muscaria laeta Jord. & Fourr.
  • Muscaria parvula Jord. & Fourr.
  • Muscaria rhodanica Jord. & Fourr.
  • Muscaria vivariensis Jord. & Fourr.
  • Muscaria vulcanorum Jord. & Fourr.
  • Saxifraga affinis D.Don
  • Saxifraga aggregata Lej.
  • Saxifraga angustifida hort. ex Engl.
  • Saxifraga angustifolia Haw.
  • Saxifraga cantabrica Boiss. & Reut. ex Engl.
  • Saxifraga cespitosa subsp. hypnoides (L.) Bonnier & Layens
  • Saxifraga cespitosa var. villosa (Willd.) Čelak.
  • Saxifraga congesta Schleich.
  • Saxifraga controversa Haw.
  • Saxifraga crateriformis Hort.Oxon. ex Ser.
  • Saxifraga curvata Schleich. ex Ser.

and 46 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. 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.