Berberis vulgarisL.

European barberry

WFO wfo-0000564027 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Berberis vulgaris, photographed by Анна Рыбакова
fig. a Анна Рыбакова, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-08 / obs. 204377917
Berberis vulgaris, photographed by Naomi Cappuccino
fig. b Naomi Cappuccino, CC0 1.0 / obs. 201857872
Berberis vulgaris, photographed by Jason Grant
fig. c Jason Grant, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205218226
Berberis vulgaris, photographed by Loopy30
fig. d Loopy30, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 201706040
Berberis vulgaris, photographed by Tracy Sherbrook
fig. e Tracy Sherbrook, CC0 1.0 / obs. 204159542
Berberis vulgaris, photographed by Pavel Borodin
fig. f Pavel Borodin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202420342
Berberis vulgaris, photographed by Katrin Simon
fig. g Katrin Simon, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201370907
Berberis vulgaris, photographed by Howard Williams
fig. h Howard Williams, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 201337045

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 = 760 observations

Peak flowering in May, from 760 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 102 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.

  • Berberis abortiva P.Renault
  • Berberis acida Gilib.
  • Berberis acutifolia Prantl
  • Berberis aethnensis Bourg. ex Willk. & Lange
  • Berberis alba (Weston) Poit. & Turpin
  • Berberis angulizans hort.
  • Berberis angulizans Ilsemann
  • Berberis apyrena (Schrad.) K.Koch
  • Berberis arborescens K.Koch
  • Berberis articulata Loisel.
  • Berberis asperma Poit. & Turpin
  • Berberis aurea Tausch
  • Berberis australis Hochr.
  • Berberis australis var. hackeliana C.K.Schneid.
  • Berberis bigelovii Schrad.
  • Berberis corallina G.Nicholson
  • Berberis dentata Tausch
  • Berberis dentata var. capitata Tausch
  • Berberis dulcis (Loudon) K.Koch
  • Berberis dumetorum Gouan
  • Berberis edulis K.Koch
  • Berberis elongata G.Nicholson
  • Berberis garciae Pau
  • Berberis globularis hort. ex Lavallée

and 78 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.