PlantKey Open ecological atlas
Planner
Home / Browse / Arabis / Holboell's Rockcress (var. pinetorum)
No openly-licensed photo yetWe add Creative-Commons photos from iNaturalist as they’re published.
Brassicaceae family

Holboell's Rockcress (var. pinetorum) Arabis holboellii var. pinetorum variety

Native Specialist-bee host

Holboell's Rockcress (var. pinetorum) is a biennial wildflower native to Alaska, Canada, and the lower 48 states. A host for pollen-specialist native bees.

More about this plant

Boechera holboellii, or Holbøll's rockcress, is a species of plant in the family Brassicaceae. Its cytology has been much studied by the Danish botanist Tyge W. Böcher. Circumscription of this species has varied, with earlier works treating it as a widespread, polymorphic species with several varieties, while more recently it has been treated as a much more narrowly defined species from Greenland. Wikipedia →

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
Conditions
Sources · Conditions
Cold hardiness (derived) — Hardiness
Hardiness
≥ zone 4 derived from its U.S. range
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
Lifespan
Biennial
In the garden
Herb layer — Sits in the herb of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →
derived roles
Species characteristics from USDA PLANTS (public domain) + TRY (CC BY) — general guidance, not a guarantee for your exact site. Deer "browsing" is documented palatability, not a deer-proof claim.

Wildlife & pollinators

How pollinator value is scored →
❧ Caterpillar hosts ~7 caterpillar species

Arabis supports ~7 caterpillar species.

Native butterfly & moth caterpillars are the base of the terrestrial food web — most songbirds rear their young almost entirely on them. As a host for native Lepidoptera this is a modest genus.

Recorded feeding on Arabis in North America, including:

Anthocharis sara · Sara Orangetip Colias occidentalis · Western Sulphur Euchloe ausonides · Large Marble Euchloe creusa · Northern Marblewing Euchloe hyantis · California Marble Euchloe olympia · Olympia Marble
+ 8 more species →
Hellula rogatalis · Cabbage Webworm Moth Paramidea lanceolata · white / sulphur butterfly Paramidea midea · white / sulphur butterfly Pieris napi · Green-Veined White Pieris virginiensis · West Virginia White Pontia beckerii · Becker's White Pontia occidentalis · Western White Pontia protodice · Checkered White
Keystone count (genus-level) from Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use records. Named species (a documented Nearctic sample, not exhaustive) from NHM HOSTS (CC0).
✦ Bees specialist-bee host

Specialist native bees depend on it.

Some native bees are pollen specialists (oligolectic) — they raise young only on pollen from particular plant genera. Arabis is a recorded specialist-bee host, so losing it can mean losing the bee that relies on it.

Xerces pollinator conservation →
Specialist hosts from Smith et al. 2024.
Species thumbnails re-hosted from iNaturalist — Creative Commons, credited per image (hover for credit). Click any species to see it on iNaturalist. Not exhaustive; many taxa have no openly-licensed photo yet.
Sources for this entry (10) Open & cited
[01] Scientific name & family — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[02] Growth habit & duration — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[03] Native status & distribution — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[04] Common name — USDA PLANTS (via GBIF)
[05] Invasive / introduced status — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — native status
[06] Description — Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
[07] Ecological value — Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts · Smith et al. 2024 (CC BY)
[08] Cold hardiness (derived) — Derived from U.S. range × USDA PHZM zones
[09] Caterpillar host count — Warren II 2026 (Dryad, CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[10] Caterpillar species — NHM HOSTS (CC0)
Spot an error or have a better photo? Every field links to its source, and the whole dataset is open.
Cite this page Open data, please attribute

PlantKey’s data is open under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to reuse and adapt, with attribution and the same licence. Photos keep their own per-image licence + credit (see Sources above).

Citation

Loading…

BibTeX 
Loading…