Thalictrum aquilegiifoliumL.

French Meadow-rue

WFO wfo-0000454527 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Thalictrum aquilegiifolium, photographed by Marco Mussita
fig. a Marco Mussita, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-10 / obs. 205775202

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
K000341523
Filed as
Thalictrum aquilegiifolium L.
Det. by
Kandemir, A.
Collected
Day, C.D. 1918-05-01
Origin
TR
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 43 botanical countries

Regions where Thalictrum aquilegiifolium is native: Amur, Buryatiya, China North-Central, China Southeast, Chita, Inner Mongolia, Irkutsk, Japan, Kamchatka, Kazakhstan, Khabarovsk, Korea, Magadan, Manchuria, Mongolia, Primorye, Sakhalin, Türkiye, Yakutiya, Albania, Austria, Baltic States, Belarus, Bulgaria, Central European Russia, Czechia-Slovakia, East European Russia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, North European Russia, Northwest European Russia, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Türkiye-in-Europe, Ukraine AmurBuryatiyaChina North-CentralChina SoutheastChitaInner MongoliaIrkutskJapanKamchatkaKazakhstanKhabarovskMagadanManchuriaMongoliaPrimoryeSakhalinTürkiyeYakutiyaAlbaniaAustriaBaltic StatesBelarusBulgariaCentral European RussiaCzechia-SlovakiaEast European RussiaFinlandFranceGermanyGreeceHungaryItalyNorth European RussiaNorthwest European RussiaNW. Balkan Pen.PolandRomaniaSpainSwedenSwitzerlandTürkiye-in-EuropeUkraine Korea
Native distribution of Thalictrum aquilegiifolium, 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
Austria AUT
Baltic States BLT
Belarus BLR
Bulgaria BUL
Central European Russia RUC
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
East European Russia RUE
Finland FIN
France FRA
Germany GER
Greece GRC
Hungary HUN
Italy ITA
North European Russia RUN
Northwest European Russia RUW
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Romania ROM
Spain SPA
Sweden SWE
Switzerland SWI
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
Ukraine UKR
Amur AMU ASIA-TEMPERATE
Buryatiya BRY
China North-Central CHN
China Southeast CHS
Chita CTA
Inner Mongolia CHI
Irkutsk IRK
Japan JAP
Kamchatka KAM
Kazakhstan KAZ
Khabarovsk KHA
Korea KOR
Magadan MAG
Manchuria CHM
Mongolia MON
Primorye PRM
Sakhalin SAK
Türkiye TUR
Yakutiya YAK

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 778 in flower of 885 examined

Proportion of examined Thalictrum aquilegiifolium in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 0 0 too few examined
Feb 0 0 too few examined
Mar 0 0 too few examined
Apr 5 10 50% 24% to 76%
May 186 206 90% 85% to 94%
Jun 503 526 96% 94% to 97%
Jul 81 112 72% 63% to 80%
Aug 2 23 9% 2% to 27%
Sep 0 5 0% 0% to 43%
Oct 1 1 too few examined
Nov 0 2 too few examined
Dec 0 0 too few examined

Peak flowering in Jun. Each bar is the share of Thalictrum aquilegiifolium 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. 778 of 885 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 6 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 2,049 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -14.0 °C -8.5 °C -2.5 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 15.1 °C 21.1 °C 24.3 °C
Annual rainfall 649 mm 1,194 mm 2,241 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 102 mm 192 mm 430 mm

It is found where winters bring hard 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 2,049 research-grade observations of Thalictrum aquilegiifolium 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 32 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.

  • Leucocoma canadensis Nieuwl.
  • Ruprechtia aquilegifolia Opiz
  • Ruprechtia aquilegiifolia (L.) Opiz
  • Thalictrum alatum Dulac
  • Thalictrum anomalum H.Lév. & Vaniot
  • Thalictrum aquilegiifolium subsp. asiaticum (Nakai) Kitag.
  • Thalictrum aquilegiifolium var. asiaticum Nakai
  • Thalictrum aquilegiifolium var. daisenense (Nakai) Emura
  • Thalictrum atropurpureum Jacq.
  • Thalictrum borderi Gand.
  • Thalictrum canadense Mill.
  • Thalictrum contortum L.
  • Thalictrum cornuti L.
  • Thalictrum crossaeum Heldreich & Charrel
  • Thalictrum daisenense Nakai
  • Thalictrum dunnianum H.Lév.
  • Thalictrum integratum Gand.
  • Thalictrum juranum Gand.
  • Thalictrum laxiflorum Schur
  • Thalictrum mitsinokuense Koidz.
  • Thalictrum nipponense Huth
  • Thalictrum niveum Lecoy.
  • Thalictrum obtusilobum Gand.
  • Thalictrum oxyphyllum Gand.

and 8 more.

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.