Sisymbrium orientaleL.

Indian hedgemustardeastern rocket

WFO wfo-0000432013 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Sisymbrium orientale, photographed by Daniel Cahen
fig. a Daniel Cahen, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-12 / obs. 205545667

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.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
3197744
Filed as
Sisymbrium orientale L.
Det. by
not recorded on this sheet
Collected
not recorded
Origin
not recorded
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 35 botanical countries

Regions where Sisymbrium orientale is native: Algeria, Canary Is., Libya, Madeira, Morocco, Tunisia, Cyprus, East Aegean Is., Gulf States, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon-Syria, North Caucasus, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Sinai, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, Pakistan, West Himalaya, Albania, Baleares, Bulgaria, Corse, France, Greece, Italy, Kriti, NW. Balkan Pen., Romania, Sardegna, Sicilia, Spain, Türkiye-in-Europe AlgeriaLibyaMoroccoTunisiaCyprusEast Aegean Is.Gulf StatesIranIraqKuwaitLebanon-SyriaNorth CaucasusPalestineSaudi ArabiaSinaiTranscaucasusTürkiyePakistanWest HimalayaAlbaniaBulgariaCorseFranceGreeceItalyKritiNW. Balkan Pen.RomaniaSiciliaSpainTürkiye-in-Europe Canary Is.MadeiraBalearesSardegna
Native distribution of Sisymbrium orientale, 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
Albania ALB EUROPE
Baleares BAL
Bulgaria BUL
Corse COR
France FRA
Greece GRC
Italy ITA
Kriti KRI
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Romania ROM
Sardegna SAR
Sicilia SIC
Spain SPA
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
Cyprus CYP ASIA-TEMPERATE
East Aegean Is. EAI
Gulf States GST
Iran IRN
Iraq IRQ
Kuwait KUW
Lebanon-Syria LBS
North Caucasus NCS
Palestine PAL
Saudi Arabia SAU
Sinai SIN
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Canary Is. CNY
Libya LBY
Madeira MDR
Morocco MOR
Tunisia TUN
Pakistan PAK ASIA-TROPICAL
West Himalaya WHM

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 217 in flower of 266 examined

Proportion of examined Sisymbrium orientale in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 13 16 81% 57% to 93%
Feb 14 18 78% 55% to 91%
Mar 39 47 83% 70% to 91%
Apr 56 70 80% 69% to 88%
May 38 46 83% 69% to 91%
Jun 15 18 83% 61% to 94%
Jul 12 13 92% 67% to 99%
Aug 5 6 83% 44% to 97%
Sep 5 5 100% 57% to 100%
Oct 6 8 75% 41% to 93%
Nov 9 10 90% 60% to 98%
Dec 5 9 56% 27% to 81%

Peak flowering in Sep. Each bar is the share of Sisymbrium orientale 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. 217 of 266 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.

When it blooms, where you are 1 state

StatePeaksObservations in flower
California Jan 82

Where it actually grows measured, from 1,490 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -4.1 °C 1.9 °C 9.0 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 18.6 °C 25.7 °C 37.0 °C
Annual rainfall 184 mm 592 mm 922 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 4 mm 101 mm 183 mm

It is found where winters bring light 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 1,490 research-grade observations of Sisymbrium orientale 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. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences 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.

  • Brassica patens Murr. ex Moench
  • Brassica subhastata Willd.
  • Crucifera columnae E.H.L.Krause
  • Erysimum subhastatum (Willd.) Hornem.
  • Hesperis columnae Kuntze
  • Hesperis orientalis (L.) Kuntze
  • Pachypodium columnae (Jacq.) Webb
  • Phryne columnae Bubani
  • Sisymbrium columnae Jacq.
  • Sisymbrium columnae var. leiocarpum DC.
  • Sisymbrium costei Foucaud & Rouy
  • Sisymbrium daghestanicum Vassilcz.
  • Sisymbrium flexuosum Dulac
  • Sisymbrium fujianense L.K.Ling
  • Sisymbrium fujianensis L.K.Ling
  • Sisymbrium irio var. longicarpum Albo
  • Sisymbrium longisiliquosum St.-Lag.
  • Sisymbrium orientale subsp. orientale L.
  • Sisymbrium orientale var. leiocarpum Halácsy
  • Sisymbrium orientale var. orientale L.
  • Sisymbrium subhastatum Hornem.
  • Sisymbrium villosum Moench
  • Sisymbrium waltheri Crantz

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. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. 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.