Scandix pecten-venerisL.

Shepherd's-needle

WFO wfo-0000434334 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Scandix pecten-veneris, photographed by Christian Berg
fig. a Christian Berg, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-14 / obs. 198324042
Scandix pecten-veneris, photographed by castieler
fig. b castieler, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 194965800
Scandix pecten-veneris, photographed by Barbara Banfield
fig. c Barbara Banfield, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 190811957
Scandix pecten-veneris, photographed by Tim Johnson
fig. d Tim Johnson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 185234002
Scandix pecten-veneris, photographed by Diana Foreman
fig. e Diana Foreman, CC0 1.0 / obs. 192650023
Scandix pecten-veneris, photographed by Mehdi Chetibi
fig. f Mehdi Chetibi, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 185214773
Scandix pecten-veneris, photographed by George Papademetriou
fig. g George Papademetriou, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 191250238
Scandix pecten-veneris, photographed by Davide Puddu
fig. h Davide Puddu, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 186583173

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.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 927 observations

Peak flowering in Apr, from 927 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 24 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.

  • Chaerophyllum pecten-veneris (L.) Crantz
  • Chaerophyllum rostratum Lam.
  • Myrrhis pecten-veneris (L.) All.
  • Pecten veneris Lam.
  • Pectinaria vulgaris Bernh.
  • Scandix aegyptiaca hort. ex Steud.
  • Scandix brachycarpa Guss.
  • Scandix cornuta Gilib.
  • Scandix cretica Mill.
  • Scandix laevigata (Azn.) Stoj. & Stef.
  • Scandix pecten Scop.
  • Scandix pecten-veneris f. involucrata (Bornm.) Thell.
  • Scandix pecten-veneris var. brevirostris Boiss.
  • Scandix pecten-veneris var. brevistyla Thell.
  • Scandix pecten-veneris var. involucrata Bornm.
  • Scandix pecten-veneris var. laevigata Azn.
  • Scandix pectinifera Stokes
  • Scandix pectiniformis St.-Lag.
  • Scandix pinnatifida Willk.
  • Scandix rostrata Salisb.
  • Scandix vulgaris Gray
  • Scandix wilhelmsii K.Koch ex Boiss.
  • Selinum pecten-veneris (L.) E.H.L.Krause
  • Wylia pecten-veneris (L.) Bubani

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.