Vinca herbaceaWaldst. & Kit.

herbaceous periwinkle

WFO wfo-0000332775 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Vinca herbacea, photographed by Aleksei Baushev
fig. a Aleksei Baushev, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-29 / obs. 201619621
Vinca herbacea, photographed by Юрий Данилевский (Yuriy Danilevsky)
fig. b Юрий Данилевский (Yuriy Danilevsky), CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205211675
Vinca herbacea, photographed by Сергей Голубев
fig. c Сергей Голубев, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 196700824
Vinca herbacea, photographed by Aleksei Baushev
fig. d Aleksei Baushev, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 196224377
Vinca herbacea, photographed by Ben Costamagna
fig. e Ben Costamagna, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 194781415
Vinca herbacea, photographed by Юрий Данилевский (Yuriy Danilevsky)
fig. f Юрий Данилевский (Yuriy Danilevsky), CC BY 4.0 / obs. 192082633
Vinca herbacea, photographed by Galyna Mykytynets
fig. g Galyna Mykytynets, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 131530648
Vinca herbacea, photographed by Богдан Кученко
fig. h Богдан Кученко, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 133394934

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 20 botanical countries

Regions where Vinca herbacea is native: East Aegean Is., Iran, Iraq, Lebanon-Syria, North Caucasus, Palestine, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, Austria, Bulgaria, Central European Russia, Czechia-Slovakia, Germany, Hungary, Krym, NW. Balkan Pen., Romania, South European Russia, Türkiye-in-Europe, Ukraine East Aegean Is.IranIraqLebanon-SyriaNorth CaucasusPalestineTranscaucasusTürkiyeAustriaBulgariaCentral European RussiaCzechia-SlovakiaGermanyHungaryKrymNW. Balkan Pen.RomaniaSouth European RussiaTürkiye-in-EuropeUkraine
Native distribution of Vinca herbacea, 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
Bulgaria BUL
Central European Russia RUC
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
Germany GER
Hungary HUN
Krym KRY
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Romania ROM
South European Russia RUS
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
Ukraine UKR
East Aegean Is. EAI ASIA-TEMPERATE
Iran IRN
Iraq IRQ
Lebanon-Syria LBS
North Caucasus NCS
Palestine PAL
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR

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 200 in flower of 206 examined

Peak flowering in Mar. Each bar is the share of Vinca herbacea 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. 200 of 206 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 8 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 9 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.

  • Vinca bottae Jaub. & Spach
  • Vinca haussknechtii Bornm. & Sint. ex Bornm.
  • Vinca herbacea subsp. libanotica (Zucc.) Bornm.
  • Vinca herbacea subsp. mixta Velen.
  • Vinca libanotica Zucc.
  • Vinca mixta Velen.
  • Vinca pumila E.D.Clarke
  • Vinca semidesertorum Ponert
  • Vinca sessilifolia A.DC.

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.