Cardamine impatiensL.

narrow-leaved bittercress

WFO wfo-0000586999 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Cardamine impatiens, photographed by Pavel Komkov
fig. a Pavel Komkov, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-30 / obs. 202088608
Cardamine impatiens, photographed by Wolfgang Jauch
fig. b Wolfgang Jauch, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204176436
Cardamine impatiens, photographed by Марина Садыкова
fig. c Марина Садыкова, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203258344
Cardamine impatiens, photographed by Yann Kemper
fig. d Yann Kemper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 203942449
Cardamine impatiens, photographed by Aleksei Baushev
fig. e Aleksei Baushev, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205241312
Cardamine impatiens, photographed by Pavel Kacl
fig. f Pavel Kacl, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201297077
Cardamine impatiens, photographed by Mila C.
fig. g Mila C., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205843440
Cardamine impatiens, photographed by Aleksei Baushev
fig. h Aleksei Baushev, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201288995

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 = 2,064 observations

Peak flowering in May, from 2,064 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 29 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.

  • Cardamine apetala Gilib.
  • Cardamine apetala Moench
  • Cardamine basisagittata W.T.Wang
  • Cardamine brachycarpa Opiz
  • Cardamine dasycarpa M.Bieb.
  • Cardamine glaphyropoda O.E.Schulz
  • Cardamine glaphyropoda var. crenata T.Y.Cheo & R.C.Fang
  • Cardamine impatiens f. humilis Peterm.
  • Cardamine impatiens prol. elongata O.E.Schulz
  • Cardamine impatiens subsp. elongata O.E.Schulz
  • Cardamine impatiens subsp. impatiens L.
  • Cardamine impatiens var. acutifolia Knaf
  • Cardamine impatiens var. angustifolia O.E.Schulz
  • Cardamine impatiens var. dasycarpa (M.Bieb.) T.Y.Cheo & R.C.Fang
  • Cardamine impatiens var. eriocarpa DC.
  • Cardamine impatiens var. fumaria H.Lév.
  • Cardamine impatiens var. impatiens L.
  • Cardamine impatiens var. longipes Hatus.
  • Cardamine impatiens var. microphylla O.E.Schulz
  • Cardamine impatiens var. minor Rouy & Foucaud
  • Cardamine impatiens var. obtusifolia Knaf
  • Cardamine impatiens var. pilosa O.E.Schulz
  • Cardamine impatiens var. tenuissima Honda
  • Cardamine miyabei Matsum.

and 5 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.