Viscaria alpina(L.) G.Don

catchfly

WFO wfo-0000422855 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Viscaria alpina, photographed by Michal Torma
fig. a Michal Torma, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-08-28 / obs. 154109876
Viscaria alpina, photographed by Yves Bas
fig. b Yves Bas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 162289180
Viscaria alpina, photographed by Jens-Christian Svenning
fig. c Jens-Christian Svenning, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 146193278
Viscaria alpina, photographed by Tomas Pocius
fig. d Tomas Pocius, CC0 1.0 / obs. 143699105
Viscaria alpina, photographed by Elias
fig. e Elias, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 138827422
Viscaria alpina, photographed by Pieter Huybrechts
fig. f Pieter Huybrechts, CC0 1.0 / obs. 134391463
Viscaria alpina, photographed by Quentin Groom
fig. g Quentin Groom, CC0 1.0 / obs. 134529218
Viscaria alpina, photographed by Pieter Huybrechts
fig. h Pieter Huybrechts, CC0 1.0 / obs. 134316163

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 18 botanical countries

Regions where Viscaria alpina is native: Austria, East European Russia, Finland, France, Great Britain, Iceland, Italy, North European Russia, Northwest European Russia, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Greenland, Labrador, Newfoundland, Nunavut, Québec AustriaEast European RussiaFinlandFranceIcelandItalyNorth European RussiaNorthwest European RussiaNorwaySpainSwedenSwitzerlandGreenlandLabradorNewfoundlandNunavutQuébec
Native distribution of Viscaria alpina, 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
East European Russia RUE
Finland FIN
France FRA
Great Britain GRB
Iceland ICE
Italy ITA
North European Russia RUN
Northwest European Russia RUW
Norway NOR
Spain SPA
Sweden SWE
Switzerland SWI
Greenland GNL NORTHERN AMERICA
Labrador LAB
Newfoundland NFL
Nunavut NUN
Québec QUE

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 297 in flower of 320 examined

Peak flowering in Jun. Each bar is the share of Viscaria alpina 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. 297 of 320 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 1,582 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -23.4 °C -12.4 °C -4.7 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 9.0 °C 13.5 °C 19.9 °C
Annual rainfall 463 mm 1,230 mm 2,739 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 76 mm 222 mm 465 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 1,582 research-grade observations of Viscaria alpina 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 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.

  • Agrostemma alpina (L.) J.Forbes
  • Agrostemma suecica (Lodd.) Maund ex Steud.
  • Lychnis alpina L.
  • Lychnis suecica G.Lodd.
  • Silene suecica (Lodd.) Greuter & Burdet
  • Steris alpina (L.) Šourková

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. USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol SISU6. public domain. 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.