Scrophularia auriculata (Water figwort)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Scrophularia auriculata, photographed by Daniel Cahen — fig. a Daniel Cahen, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-12 / obs. 205536964

Scrophularia auriculata, photographed by Piermario Maculan — fig. b Piermario Maculan, CC0 1.0 / obs. 202473074

Scrophularia auriculata, photographed by Josep Gesti — fig. c Josep Gesti, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 200044468

Scrophularia auriculata, photographed by Zeke Marshall — fig. d Zeke Marshall, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 198052382

Scrophularia auriculata, photographed by Carminda Santos — fig. e Carminda Santos, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 197889735

Scrophularia auriculata, photographed by Stephen James McWilliam — fig. g Stephen James McWilliam, CC0 1.0 / obs. 195117077

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 19 botanical countries

Native distribution of Scrophularia auriculata, 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
Baleares	BAL	EUROPE
Belgium	BGM
Corse	COR
France	FRA
Germany	GER
Great Britain	GRB
Ireland	IRE
Italy	ITA
Kriti	KRI
Netherlands	NET
Portugal	POR
Sardegna	SAR
Sicilia	SIC
Spain	SPA
Switzerland	SWI
Algeria	ALG	AFRICA
Azores	AZO
Morocco	MOR
Tunisia	TUN

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 203 in flower of 257 examined

77%

62%

82%

45%

79%

88%

92%

71%

92%

33%

70%

85%

Proportion of examined Scrophularia auriculata in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	17	22	77%	57% to 90%
Feb	8	13	62%	36% to 82%
Mar	9	11	82%	52% to 95%
Apr	5	11	45%	21% to 72%
May	22	28	79%	60% to 90%
Jun	52	59	88%	77% to 94%
Jul	34	37	92%	79% to 97%
Aug	17	24	71%	51% to 85%
Sep	12	13	92%	67% to 99%
Oct	3	9	33%	12% to 65%
Nov	7	10	70%	40% to 89%
Dec	17	20	85%	64% to 95%

Peak flowering in Sep. Each bar is the share of Scrophularia auriculata 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. 203 of 257 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 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 39 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.

Scrophularia appendiculata Balb. ex Wydler
Scrophularia aquatica f. appendiculata (Mérat) Cout.
Scrophularia aquatica f. auriculata (L.) Cout.
Scrophularia aquatica f. flavidiflora Merino
Scrophularia aquatica f. lyrata (Willd.) Cout.
Scrophularia aquatica lus. periphylla Merino
Scrophularia aquatica subsp. jallui Gattef. & Weiller
Scrophularia aquatica var. ampla Merino
Scrophularia aquatica var. appendiculata Mérat
Scrophularia aquatica var. durandii (Boiss. & Reut.) Pau
Scrophularia aquatica var. glabra Cout.
Scrophularia aquatica var. laxa Maire
Scrophularia aquatica var. parviflora (Ball) Jahand. & Maire
Scrophularia aquatica var. pubescens Caruel
Scrophularia auriculata f. terrestris Pau
Scrophularia auriculata subsp. major Lange
Scrophularia auriculata subsp. minor Lange
Scrophularia auriculata subsp. pseudoauriculata (Sennen) O.Bolòs & Vigo
Scrophularia auriculata var. glabra Lange
Scrophularia auriculata var. glabrata Lange
Scrophularia auriculata var. microcarpa Merino
Scrophularia auriculata var. parviflora Ball
Scrophularia auriculata var. pubescens Lange
Scrophularia auriculata var. pubescens Lange

and 15 more.

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.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. 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.