Zizia aurea(L.) W.D.J.Koch

golden Alexanders

WFO wfo-0001067721 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Zizia aurea, photographed by Marilynn Miller
fig. a Marilynn Miller, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-07 / obs. 204255261
Zizia aurea, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. b Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 203507807
Zizia aurea, photographed by Marilynn Miller
fig. c Marilynn Miller, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202245207
Zizia aurea, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. d Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 203973524
Zizia aurea, photographed by Skyler Principe
fig. e Skyler Principe, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203905836
Zizia aurea, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. f Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 202809992
Zizia aurea, photographed by jyoung2399
fig. g jyoung2399, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204205572
Zizia aurea, photographed by Marilynn Miller
fig. h Marilynn Miller, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203384633

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 = 3,243 observations

Peak flowering in May, from 3,243 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 10 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.

  • Carum aureum Benth. & Hook.f.
  • Sison aureum Spreng.
  • Smyrnium acuminatum Sm.
  • Smyrnium aureum L.
  • Smyrnium luteum Muhl.
  • Thaspium aureum (L.) Nutt.
  • Zizia aurea f. aurea
  • Zizia aurea f. obtusifolia (Bissell) Fernald
  • Zizia aurea var. acuminata (Sm.) DC.
  • Zizia aurea var. obtusifolia Bissell

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.