Thymus linearisBenth.

WFO wfo-0000324294 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Thymus linearis, photographed by Name
fig. a Name, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-04-30 / obs. 193625218
Thymus linearis, photographed by Name
fig. b Name, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 192295233
Thymus linearis, photographed by Name
fig. c Name, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 190052415
Thymus linearis, photographed by Siddarth Machado
fig. d Siddarth Machado, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 38746498
Thymus linearis, photographed by Dinesh Valke
fig. e Dinesh Valke, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 172038191
Thymus linearis, photographed by Dinesh Valke
fig. f Dinesh Valke, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 172647919
Thymus linearis, photographed by Ina Siebert
fig. g Ina Siebert, CC0 1.0 / obs. 61496118
Thymus linearis, photographed by Name
fig. h Name, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200439599

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
Smithsonian, US National Herbarium
Accession
US 2193162
Filed as
Thymus linearis Benth.
Det. by
not recorded on this sheet
Collected
W. N. Koelz 1937-06-18
Origin
AF
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC0 1.0)

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 8 botanical countries

Regions where Thymus linearis is native: Afghanistan, Iran, Tadzhikistan, Xinjiang, India, Nepal, Pakistan, West Himalaya AfghanistanIranTadzhikistanXinjiangIndiaNepalPakistanWest Himalaya
Native distribution of Thymus linearis, 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
Afghanistan AFG ASIA-TEMPERATE
Iran IRN
Tadzhikistan TZK
Xinjiang CHX
India IND ASIA-TROPICAL
Nepal NEP
Pakistan PAK
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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 76 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -23.4 °C -13.1 °C -7.0 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 11.4 °C 15.8 °C 21.6 °C
Annual rainfall 448 mm 1,350 mm 2,259 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 35 mm 129 mm 218 mm

It is found where winters are severely cold. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 76 research-grade observations of Thymus linearis 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 6 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.

  • Thymus afghanicus Ronniger
  • Thymus baluchistanicus Klokov
  • Thymus himalayicus Ronniger
  • Thymus linearis subsp. hedgei Jalas
  • Thymus pseudalbanus Ronniger
  • Thymus serpyllum var. albus B.Ghosh & U.C.Bhattach.

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.