Alnus incana(L.) Moench

grey alder

WFO wfo-0000945749 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Alnus incana, photographed by Павел Демиденко
fig. a Павел Демиденко, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-10 / obs. 204828491
Alnus incana, photographed by CorentinD
fig. b CorentinD, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203286804
Alnus incana, photographed by Марина Садыкова
fig. c Марина Садыкова, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203253447
Alnus incana, photographed by Attila Oláh
fig. d Attila Oláh, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201715913
Alnus incana, photographed by Марина Садыкова
fig. e Марина Садыкова, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201328621
Alnus incana, photographed by Marilynn Miller
fig. f Marilynn Miller, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201246679
Alnus incana, photographed by Shirley Zundell
fig. g Shirley Zundell, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204032901
Alnus incana, photographed by Jason Grant
fig. h Jason Grant, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200306772

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 = 405 observations

Peak flowering in Apr, from 405 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 146 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.

  • Alnus alisoviana Mandl
  • Alnus alnus (L.) Britton
  • Alnus americana (Regel) Czerep.
  • Alnus argentata (Norrl.) Tzvelev
  • Alnus argentata var. pinnatipartita (Norrl.) Tzvelev
  • Alnus borealis (Norrl.) C.Regel
  • Alnus canadensis Lodd. ex G.Don
  • Alnus communis Desf. ex Kuntze
  • Alnus communis Desf.
  • Alnus densiflora C.H.Mull.
  • Alnus februaria var. incana (L.) Kuntze
  • Alnus glauca (Aiton) F.Michx.
  • Alnus glauca F.Michx.
  • Alnus glutinosa var. incana (L.) Pers.
  • Alnus glutinosa var. rugosa (Du Roi) Regel
  • Alnus glutinosa var. virescens Kuntze
  • Alnus incana f. acuminata (Regel) Regel
  • Alnus incana f. acutiloba Callier
  • Alnus incana f. acutiloba (W.D.J.Koch) Hallier
  • Alnus incana f. americana (Regel) P.D.Sell
  • Alnus incana f. angustissima Holmb. ex Hyl.
  • Alnus incana f. arcuata Skårman
  • Alnus incana f. argyrophylla Callier
  • Alnus incana f. aurea Dippel

and 122 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.