Scilla verna (sea-onion)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Scilla verna, photographed by Anne Thomson — fig. a Anne Thomson, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-03 / obs. 203460397

Scilla verna, photographed by Sheelagh Halsey — fig. d Sheelagh Halsey, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199726848

Scilla verna, photographed by Jerry Lanfear — fig. e Jerry Lanfear, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200303591

Scilla verna, photographed by Marco — fig. f Marco, CC0 1.0 / obs. 195600793

Scilla verna, photographed by Carminda Santos — fig. g Carminda Santos, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 188844940

Scilla verna, photographed by Bastien Alegot — fig. h Bastien Alegot, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 183752340

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 8 botanical countries

Native distribution of Scilla verna, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Føroyar	FOR	EUROPE
France	FRA
Great Britain	GRB
Ireland	IRE
Norway	NOR
Portugal	POR
Spain	SPA
Morocco	MOR	AFRICA

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 686 in flower of 703 examined

100%

97%

99%

98%

83%

Proportion of examined Scilla verna in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	7	7	100%	65% to 100%
Feb	32	33	97%	85% to 99%
Mar	78	79	99%	93% to 100%
Apr	169	172	98%	95% to 99%
May	258	264	98%	95% to 99%
Jun	121	123	98%	94% to 100%
Jul	19	23	83%	63% to 93%
Aug	1	1	too few examined
Sep	0	0	too few examined
Oct	0	0	too few examined
Nov	0	0	too few examined
Dec	1	1	too few examined

Peak flowering in Jan. Each bar is the share of Scilla verna 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. 686 of 703 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 5 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.

Also published as 23 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.

Oncostema beirana (Samp.) Speta
Oncostema odorata (Link) Speta
Oncostema ramburei (Boiss.) Speta
Oncostema umbellata (Ramond) Speta
Oncostema verna (Huds.) Speta
Petranthe verna (Huds.) Salisb.
Scilla alliifolia Lapeyr.
Scilla beirana Samp.
Scilla mixta Raf.
Scilla odorata Link
Scilla pratensis Berger ex Schult. & Schult.f.
Scilla ramburei Boiss.
Scilla ramburei subsp. beirana (Samp.) Franco & Rocha Afonso
Scilla umbellata Ramond
Scilla verna subsp. ramburei (Boiss.) Maire
Scilla verna var. major Boiss.
Scilla verna var. maroccana Maire
Scilla vernalis Salisb.
Stellaris verna (Huds.) Bubani
Tractema odorata (Link) Speta
Tractema ramburei (Boiss.) Speta
Tractema umbellata (Ramond) Speta
Tractema verna (Huds.) Speta

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol ONVE. public domain. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
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.