Nepeta catariaL.

Catnip

WFO wfo-0000250846 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Nepeta cataria, photographed by Steven Bodzin
fig. a Steven Bodzin, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-08-23 / obs. 154351817
Nepeta cataria, photographed by Tom Lazar
fig. b Tom Lazar, CC0 1.0 / obs. 156533786
Nepeta cataria, photographed by Randal
fig. c Randal, CC0 1.0 / obs. 157941808
Nepeta cataria, photographed by Randal
fig. d Randal, CC0 1.0 / obs. 157954117
Nepeta cataria, photographed by Rae Bosley
fig. e Rae Bosley, CC0 1.0 / obs. 161549216
Nepeta cataria, photographed by Lauren Bosch
fig. f Lauren Bosch, CC0 1.0 / obs. 156378871
Nepeta cataria, photographed by Ian Wolfe
fig. g Ian Wolfe, CC0 1.0 / obs. 152525924
Nepeta cataria, photographed by Ian Wolfe
fig. h Ian Wolfe, CC0 1.0 / obs. 152524869

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 = 1,224 observations

Peak flowering in Jul, from 1,224 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 19 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.

  • Calamintha albiflora Vaniot
  • Cataria tomentosa Gilib.
  • Cataria vulgaris Gaterau
  • Glechoma cataria (L.) Kuntze
  • Glechoma macrura (Ledeb. ex Spreng.) Kuntze
  • Nepeta americana Vitman
  • Nepeta bodinieri Vaniot
  • Nepeta cataria f. laurentii (Sennen) Font Quer
  • Nepeta cataria var. canescens Sennen
  • Nepeta cataria var. citriodora Dumoulin ex Lej.
  • Nepeta ceretana Sennen
  • Nepeta citriodora (Dumoulin ex Lej.) Dumort.
  • Nepeta laurentii Sennen
  • Nepeta macrura Ledeb. ex Spreng.
  • Nepeta minor Mill.
  • Nepeta mollis Salisb.
  • Nepeta ruderalis Boiss.
  • Nepeta tomentosa Vitman
  • Nepeta vulgaris Lam.

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.