Stachys creticaL.

WFO wfo-0000313885 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Stachys cretica, photographed by Юрий Данилевский (Yuriy Danilevsky)
fig. a Юрий Данилевский (Yuriy Danilevsky), CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-29 / obs. 205090827

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
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Accession
K000928372
Filed as
Stachys cretica subsp. garana (Boiss.) Rech.f.
Det. by
Hamadie, M.
Collected
Kotschy, T. 1841-01-01
Origin
IQ
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 19 botanical countries

Regions where Stachys cretica is native: Cyprus, East Aegean Is., Iran, Iraq, Lebanon-Syria, North Caucasus, Palestine, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, Albania, Bulgaria, France, Greece, Italy, Kriti, Krym, NW. Balkan Pen., Sicilia, Türkiye-in-Europe CyprusEast Aegean Is.IranIraqLebanon-SyriaNorth CaucasusPalestineTranscaucasusTürkiyeAlbaniaBulgariaFranceGreeceItalyKritiKrymNW. Balkan Pen.SiciliaTürkiye-in-Europe
Native distribution of Stachys cretica, 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.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Albania ALB EUROPE
Bulgaria BUL
France FRA
Greece GRC
Italy ITA
Kriti KRI
Krym KRY
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Sicilia SIC
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
Cyprus CYP ASIA-TEMPERATE
East Aegean Is. EAI
Iran IRN
Iraq IRQ
Lebanon-Syria LBS
North Caucasus NCS
Palestine PAL
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR

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 43 in flower of 63 examined

Proportion of examined Stachys cretica in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 0 2 too few examined
Feb 0 0 too few examined
Mar 0 3 too few examined
Apr 11 12 92% 65% to 99%
May 18 23 78% 58% to 90%
Jun 6 6 100% 61% to 100%
Jul 6 9 67% 35% to 88%
Aug 2 3 too few examined
Sep 0 1 too few examined
Oct 0 2 too few examined
Nov 0 0 too few examined
Dec 0 2 too few examined

Peak flowering in Jun. Each bar is the share of Stachys cretica 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. 43 of 63 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 8 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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 910 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -4.0 °C 0.2 °C 9.7 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 23.5 °C 25.9 °C 29.8 °C
Annual rainfall 525 mm 806 mm 1,255 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 5 mm 137 mm 202 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 910 research-grade observations of Stachys cretica 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 22 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.

  • Eriostomum creticum (L.) Hoffmanns. & Link
  • Eriostomum salviifolium (Ten.) C.Presl
  • Sideritis cassia Boiss.
  • Stachys albereana Neyraut & Debeaux
  • Stachys altissima Desf.
  • Stachys cassia (Boiss.) Boiss.
  • Stachys cretica f. major Heldr.
  • Stachys cretica subsp. velata (Klokov) Greuter & Burdet
  • Stachys cretica var. garana (Boiss.) Boiss.
  • Stachys cretica var. paniculata Boiss.
  • Stachys garana Boiss.
  • Stachys germanica subsp. italica (Briq.) P.Fourn.
  • Stachys germanica subsp. salviifolia (Ten.) Gams
  • Stachys germanica var. boissieri Briq.
  • Stachys germanica var. cassia (Boiss.) Briq.
  • Stachys germanica var. garana (Boiss.) Briq.
  • Stachys germanica var. italica Briq.
  • Stachys germanica var. mersinaea (Boiss.) Briq.
  • Stachys mersinaea Boiss.
  • Stachys pungens Banks & Sol.
  • Stachys salviifolia Ten.
  • Stachys velata Klokov

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.