Actaea rubra(Aiton) Willd.

red baneberry

WFO wfo-0000519118 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Actaea rubra, photographed by Skyler Principe
fig. a Skyler Principe, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-07 / obs. 205051807
Actaea rubra, photographed by Carol Ann Vermeer
fig. b Carol Ann Vermeer, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205056331
Actaea rubra, photographed by tonyblake
fig. c tonyblake, CC0 1.0 / obs. 205012971
Actaea rubra, photographed by Shane Johnson
fig. d Shane Johnson, CC0 1.0 / obs. 204636006
Actaea rubra, photographed by mfeaver
fig. e mfeaver, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202108475
Actaea rubra, photographed by Timothy McNitt
fig. f Timothy McNitt, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203120370
Actaea rubra, photographed by Lyrae
fig. g Lyrae, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202482306
Actaea rubra, photographed by Ken-ichi Ueda
fig. h Ken-ichi Ueda, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202110480

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.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 1,814 observations

Peak flowering in May, from 1,814 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 47 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.

  • Actaea alba (L.) Mill.
  • Actaea americana Pursh
  • Actaea americana var. alba (L.) Pursh
  • Actaea americana var. rubra (Aiton) Pursh
  • Actaea arguta Nutt.
  • Actaea arguta var. alabastrina Lunell
  • Actaea arguta var. eburnea (Rydb.) Cockerell
  • Actaea arguta var. pauciflora R.R.Gates
  • Actaea arguta var. viridiflora (Greene) Tidestr. & Kittell
  • Actaea aspleniifolia Greene
  • Actaea brachypetala DC.
  • Actaea brachypetala var. alba (L.) DC.
  • Actaea brachypetala var. rubra (Aiton) DC.
  • Actaea californica Greene
  • Actaea caudata Greene
  • Actaea eburnea Rydb.
  • Actaea erythrocarpa (Fisch.) Kom.
  • Actaea erythrocarpa f. kamtschatika Kom.
  • Actaea longipes Spach
  • Actaea neglecta Gillman
  • Actaea rubra f. arguta (Nutt.) Huth
  • Actaea rubra f. rubra
  • Actaea rubra subsp. arguta (Nutt. ex Torr. & A.Gray) Hultén
  • Actaea rubra subsp. rubra

and 23 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.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.