Verbascum pulverulentum (Hoary Mullein)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Verbascum pulverulentum, photographed by scolym — fig. a scolym, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-04-29 / obs. 191930648

Verbascum pulverulentum, photographed by Noa — fig. b Noa, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 174138686

Verbascum pulverulentum, photographed by Rafael Medina — fig. c Rafael Medina, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 149439170

Verbascum pulverulentum, photographed by Josep Gesti — fig. d Josep Gesti, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 131732233

Verbascum pulverulentum, photographed by Yves Bas — fig. e Yves Bas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 74465101

Verbascum pulverulentum, photographed by Thomas Koffel — fig. f Thomas Koffel, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 8726971

Verbascum pulverulentum, photographed by Andre Hosper — fig. g Andre Hosper, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 10596794

Verbascum pulverulentum, photographed by Coulonges Philippe — fig. h Coulonges Philippe, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 156343550

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 17 botanical countries

Native distribution of Verbascum pulverulentum, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Albania	ALB	EUROPE
Belgium	BGM
Bulgaria	BUL
Corse	COR
France	FRA
Germany	GER
Great Britain	GRB
Greece	GRC
Hungary	HUN
Italy	ITA
NW. Balkan Pen.	YUG
Portugal	POR
Romania	ROM
Sardegna	SAR
Sicilia	SIC
Spain	SPA
Switzerland	SWI

Not drawn on the map: Great Britain. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is listed rather than guessed at.

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 169 in flower of 229 examined

27%

59%

94%

87%

74%

83%

50%

Proportion of examined Verbascum pulverulentum in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	0	0	too few examined
Feb	0	5	0%	0% to 43%
Mar	0	2	too few examined
Apr	3	11	27%	10% to 57%
May	23	39	59%	43% to 73%
Jun	75	80	94%	86% to 97%
Jul	27	31	87%	71% to 95%
Aug	23	31	74%	57% to 86%
Sep	10	12	83%	55% to 95%
Oct	5	10	50%	24% to 76%
Nov	1	4	too few examined
Dec	2	4	too few examined

Peak flowering in Jun. Each bar is the share of Verbascum pulverulentum 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. 169 of 229 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 4 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.

Also published as 13 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.

Lychnitis pulverulenta (Vill.) Fourr.
Thapsus floccosum (Waldst. & Kit.) Raf.
Thapsus pulverulentum (Vill.) Raf.
Verbascum acutifolium Halácsy
Verbascum farinosum Pourr. ex Willk. & Lange
Verbascum floccosum Waldst. & Kit.
Verbascum floccosum f. manlevense Sennen & Gonzalo
Verbascum floccosum var. heterophyllum Rouy
Verbascum haemorrhoidale Aiton
Verbascum heterophyllum Moretti
Verbascum laxiflorum C.Presl
Verbascum pulverulentum var. hybridum Gaudin
Verbascum pulvinatum Thuill.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
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.