Thapsia foetidaL.

WFO wfo-0000409883 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 4 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 4 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.

Thapsia foetida, photographed by Duarte Frade
fig. a Duarte Frade, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-06 / obs. 195443308
Thapsia foetida, photographed by João Gonçalves
fig. b João Gonçalves, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 118033052
Thapsia foetida, photographed by Oleg Kosterin
fig. c Oleg Kosterin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 178177377
Thapsia foetida, photographed by Duarte Frade
fig. d Duarte Frade, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195443340
Thapsia foetida, photographed by Duarte Frade
fig. e Duarte Frade, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195443311
Thapsia foetida, photographed by Oleg Kosterin
fig. f Oleg Kosterin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 178175858
Thapsia foetida, photographed by Oleg Kosterin
fig. g Oleg Kosterin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 178177384
Thapsia foetida, photographed by Oleg Kosterin
fig. h Oleg Kosterin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 178175863

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 3 botanical countries

Regions where Thapsia foetida is native: Morocco, Portugal, Spain MoroccoPortugalSpain
Native distribution of Thapsia foetida, 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
Portugal POR EUROPE
Spain SPA
Morocco MOR AFRICA

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.

Also published as 11 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.

  • Cnidium fontanesii Spreng.
  • Elaeoselinum foetidum (L.) Boiss.
  • Elaeoselinum foetidum var. brachylobum Pau
  • Elaeoselinum foetidum var. brachylobum Font Quer
  • Elaeoselinum polygamum (Lam.) Caruel
  • Laserpitium africanum F.Dietr.
  • Laserpitium atlanticum Poir.
  • Laserpitium foetidum (L.) Calest.
  • Laserpitium polygamum Lam.
  • Ligusticum fontanesii Spreng.
  • Thapsia polygama Salzm. ex Ball

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.