Tofieldia calyculata(L.) Wahlenb.

Tofield's asphodel

WFO wfo-0000748467 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Tofieldia calyculata, photographed by CorentinD
fig. a CorentinD, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-14 / obs. 208072412

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
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
04364047
Filed as
Tofieldia calyculata (L.) Wahlenb.
Det. by
not recorded on this sheet
Collected
not recorded
Origin
not recorded
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 15 botanical countries

Regions where Tofieldia calyculata is native: Austria, Baltic States, Belarus, Central European Russia, Czechia-Slovakia, France, Germany, Italy, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine AustriaBaltic StatesBelarusCentral European RussiaCzechia-SlovakiaFranceGermanyItalyNW. Balkan Pen.PolandRomaniaSpainSwedenSwitzerlandUkraine
Native distribution of Tofieldia calyculata, 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
Austria AUT EUROPE
Baltic States BLT
Belarus BLR
Central European Russia RUC
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
France FRA
Germany GER
Italy ITA
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Romania ROM
Spain SPA
Sweden SWE
Switzerland SWI
Ukraine UKR

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 349 in flower of 436 examined

Proportion of examined Tofieldia calyculata in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 0 0 too few examined
Feb 0 1 too few examined
Mar 0 2 too few examined
Apr 0 3 too few examined
May 11 13 85% 58% to 96%
Jun 146 156 94% 89% to 96%
Jul 175 212 83% 77% to 87%
Aug 13 39 33% 21% to 49%
Sep 4 8 50% 22% to 78%
Oct 0 1 too few examined
Nov 0 1 too few examined
Dec 0 0 too few examined

Peak flowering in Jun. Each bar is the share of Tofieldia calyculata 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. 349 of 436 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 7 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 2,018 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -15.9 °C -10.0 °C -4.0 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 13.9 °C 17.9 °C 23.1 °C
Annual rainfall 881 mm 1,543 mm 2,381 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 132 mm 259 mm 453 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 2,018 research-grade observations of Tofieldia calyculata 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 38 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.

  • Anthericum calyculatum L.
  • Anthericum pseudoasphodelus Jacq.
  • Asphodeliris calyculata (L.) Kuntze
  • Cymba calyculata (L.) Dulac
  • Hebelia allemanica C.C.Gmel.
  • Hebelia collina C.C.Gmel.
  • Helonias anthericoides Hoppe ex Schult. & Schult.f.
  • Helonias borealis Willd.
  • Heriteria anthericoides Schrank
  • Isidrogalvia calyculata (L.) Ruiz & Pav.
  • Narthecium alpinum Michx.
  • Narthecium calyculatum (L.) Lam.
  • Narthecium iridifolium Vill.
  • Scheuchzeria calyculata (L.) Scop.
  • Scheuchzeria pseudoasphodelus (Jacq.) Scop.
  • Tofieldia allemannica Bluff & Fingerh.
  • Tofieldia alpina Sm.
  • Tofieldia anthericoides Roth
  • Tofieldia calyculata f. ramosa (Wimm. & Grab.) Bolzon
  • Tofieldia calyculata prol. glacialis (Gaudin) Rouy
  • Tofieldia calyculata subsp. borealis (Willd.) Douin
  • Tofieldia calyculata subsp. collina (C.C.Gmel.) K.Richt.
  • Tofieldia calyculata subsp. rubra (F.Br.) K.Richt.
  • Tofieldia calyculata var. collina (C.C.Gmel.) Bolzon

and 14 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.