Scabiosa atropurpureaL.

Sweet scabious

WFO wfo-0000500186 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Scabiosa atropurpurea, photographed by Quentin Groom
fig. a Quentin Groom, CC0 1.0 / 2022-05-15 / obs. 197817340
Scabiosa atropurpurea, photographed by Duarte Frade
fig. b Duarte Frade, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195427710
Scabiosa atropurpurea, photographed by carnifex
fig. c carnifex, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202124794
Scabiosa atropurpurea, photographed by E Santos Ortega
fig. d E Santos Ortega, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 196551196
Scabiosa atropurpurea, photographed by Kym Nicolson
fig. e Kym Nicolson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 192062394
Scabiosa atropurpurea, photographed by Kym Nicolson
fig. f Kym Nicolson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 194251555
Scabiosa atropurpurea, photographed by Ian
fig. g Ian, CC0 1.0 / obs. 194149175
Scabiosa atropurpurea, photographed by Ian
fig. h Ian, CC0 1.0 / obs. 194153635

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.

Flowering n = 1,770 observations

Peak flowering in May, from 1,770 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

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.

  • Asterocephalus acutiflorus Rchb.
  • Asterocephalus ambiguus Rchb.
  • Asterocephalus atropurpureus (L.) Spreng.
  • Asterocephalus grandiflorus Sweet
  • Asterocephalus maritimus (L.) Spreng.
  • Cyrtostemma atropurpurea (L.) Spach
  • Cyrtostemma atropurpureum (L.) Spach
  • Cyrtostemma maritimum (L.) Fourr.
  • Scabiosa major Vilm.
  • Scabiosa maritima L.
  • Sclerostemma atropurpureum (L.) Schott
  • Sixalix atropurpurea (L.) Greuter & Burdet
  • Spongostemma atropurpureum (L.) Tiegh.
  • Spongostemma maritimum (L.) Tiegh.

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.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.