Levisticum officinale; photograph (c) B. Phalan, some rights reserved (CC BY)

CC BY(c) B. Phalan, some rights reserved (CC BY) · observed growing wild · 2025-05-03

Levisticum officinale W.D.J.Koch

Lovage; Garden lovage

Apiaceae · Afghanistan, Iran

No habitat climate

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Sow seed

Levisticum officinale, photograph author not stated, no rights reserved

Levisticum officinale, photograph (c) Marie-Louise Besenius, some rights reserved (CC BY)

Levisticum officinale, photograph (c) Igor Balashov, some rights reserved (CC BY)

62 photographs ›

Summary

Lovage ( LUV-ij; Levisticum officinale) is a perennial plant, the sole species in the genus Levisticum in the family Apiaceae, subfamily Apioideae. It is native to Afghanistan and Iran.

Quoted from Wikipedia, "Lovage", CC BY-SA 4.0.

Cultivation

Nothing derived: no habitat climate for this species.

Climate across the habitat

No habitat climate can be derived: 1 in-range record, none placed to within 10 km. 1 of the 1 in-range records is placed to worse than 10 km, or to no stated accuracy and fewer than three decimals or by something other than a person's observation, and cannot place a climate cell, though it counts for the map and its marker.

Natural habitat

Native range as published by WCVP.

Openly licensed records inside the range, framed on where they fall.

NativeAfghanistan, Iran · introduced: Denmark, Finland, Great Britain, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary, Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland, France, Spain, Albania, Bulgaria, Italy, Romania, Yugoslavia, Belarus, Baltic States, Krym, Central European Russia, East European Russia, North European Russia, South European Russia, Ukraine, Inner Mongolia, Manchuria, China North-Central, China Southeast, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Québec, Colorado, Montana, Minnesota, Missouri, Wisconsin, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont, New Mexico, Chile South · regions are the level-3 units of the World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions, as Kew's World Checklist records ranges, some under historical names such as Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia (how).

Kew's description“perennial” · “temperate” · quoted from WCVP, RBG Kew (CC BY 4.0); not derived here

Evidence usedThe map marker rests on the one georeferenced record inside the native range, openly licensed and shown on the map. 1803 records outside the WCVP native range not used. Under a dozen records behind the map. No climate across the range is derived for this species. 1 in-range record is placed to worse than 10 km, or with no stated accuracy (admitted only as a person's observation to three decimals), and stays on the map but off the climate.

Photographs

Photographs: author not stated, no rights reserved · CC0 (3); (c) Marie-Louise Besenius, some rights reserved (CC BY); (c) Igor Balashov, some rights reserved (CC BY) (2).

Names & registers

Also known as Angelica levisticum; Angelica paludapifolia; Hipposelinum levisticum; Levisticum caucasicum; Levisticum levisticum and 6 more. (GBIF Backbone)

GBIF POWO IPNI WFO Wikidata Wikipedia iNaturalist

The record

Family

Apiaceae

Described by

W.D.J.Koch

Native to

Afghanistan, Iran

Wild records

1 in range · 1 open

Every figure here is derived from public data by a stated rule and names its source; nothing about this species is written for its page by a person or by AI, apart from the marked, credited quotations. How →

Where this page came from built 2026-10-22

GBIF species record gbif.species answeredasked 2026-10-22

GBIF synonyms gbif.synonyms answeredasked 2026-10-22

GBIF common names gbif.vernacular answeredasked 2026-10-22names fetched 2026-10-22

WCVP native range wcvp.distribution answeredas of 2026-06-04

GBIF occurrence records gbif.occurrences answeredas of 2026-10-21GBIF occurrence download https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.hbdw64, of 2026-10-21; 69 records within 1 km of a botanic garden, herbarium or zoo left out (45 at a botanic garden or arboretum, 1 at a herbarium, 23 at a zoo; Wikidata's list)

Habitat climate climate nothing to reportasked 2026-10-221 in-range record, none placed to within 10 km

Wikidata wikidata answeredasked 2026-10-22

Wikipedia wikipedia answeredasked 2026-10-22Wikipedia's article Lovage, the English article of this species' Wikidata item (Q27615)

iNaturalist photographs, wild inat.photos.wild answeredasked 2026-10-22from iNaturalist's open data of 2026-09-27: research-grade observations with an open-licence photograph, the 24 whose photographs iNaturalist received last (the open data holds no votes); filled 2026-10-22

iNaturalist photographs, cultivated inat.photos.cultivated not asked

GBIF media gbif.media answeredasked 2026-10-22

OpenAlex papers openalex not askednot yet asked for this reference; a later fill takes the papers from OpenAlex's snapshot

Every source is recorded as having answered, reported nothing, refused, failed, not been asked, or answered twice where one answer is taken (“not taken: two items answered”), and, for a source asked when this page was built, when: the figures are as the source held them that day; a source read from a file (Kew's World Checklist, a GBIF download) says "as of" the file's day instead; a row carried from an earlier build of the page names that build instead. Only “nothing to report” is ever shown as an absence. Records came from 97 datasets via GBIF.org; each carries its own licence.