Sphallerocarpus gracilis(Besser ex Trevir.) Koso-Pol.

WFO wfo-0000434795 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 5 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 5 times, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Sphallerocarpus gracilis, photographed by Urgamal Magsar
fig. a Urgamal Magsar, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-06 / obs. 203738304

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 24 botanical countries

Regions where Sphallerocarpus gracilis is native: Altay, Amur, Buryatiya, China North-Central, China South-Central, Chita, Inner Mongolia, Irkutsk, Japan, Kamchatka, Khabarovsk, Korea, Krasnoyarsk, Kuril Is., Magadan, Manchuria, Mongolia, Primorye, Qinghai, Sakhalin, Tuva, West Siberia, Xinjiang, Yakutiya AltayAmurBuryatiyaChina North-CentralChina South-CentralChitaInner MongoliaIrkutskJapanKamchatkaKhabarovskKrasnoyarskMagadanManchuriaMongoliaPrimoryeQinghaiSakhalinTuvaWest SiberiaXinjiangYakutiya Korea
Native distribution of Sphallerocarpus gracilis, 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
Altay ALT ASIA-TEMPERATE
Amur AMU
Buryatiya BRY
China North-Central CHN
China South-Central CHC
Chita CTA
Inner Mongolia CHI
Irkutsk IRK
Japan JAP
Kamchatka KAM
Khabarovsk KHA
Korea KOR
Krasnoyarsk KRA
Kuril Is. KUR
Magadan MAG
Manchuria CHM
Mongolia MON
Primorye PRM
Qinghai CHQ
Sakhalin SAK
Tuva TVA
West Siberia WSB
Xinjiang CHX
Yakutiya YAK

Not drawn on the map: Kuril Is.. 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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 280 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -29.2 °C -26.0 °C -18.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 19.4 °C 22.8 °C 24.8 °C
Annual rainfall 219 mm 330 mm 786 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 7 mm 10 mm 67 mm

It is found where winters are arctic. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 280 research-grade observations of Sphallerocarpus gracilis 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.

Also published as 7 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 cyminum Trevir.
  • Chaerophyllum cyminum Fisch. ex DC.
  • Chaerophyllum gracile Besser ex Trevir.
  • Chaerophyllum gracile Besser
  • Conopodium cyninum Benth. & Hook.f.
  • Myrrhis gracilis Spreng.
  • Sphallerocarpus cyminum Besser ex DC.

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. 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.