Acanthus polystachyusDelile

WFO wfo-0000513873 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Acanthus polystachyus, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. a Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2021-12-16 / obs. 173008185
Acanthus polystachyus, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. b Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 173008029
Acanthus polystachyus, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. c Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 76926034
Acanthus polystachyus, photographed by Annika Lindqvist
fig. d Annika Lindqvist, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 48710209
Acanthus polystachyus, photographed by Annika Lindqvist
fig. e Annika Lindqvist, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 48734987
Acanthus polystachyus, photographed by Paul Prior
fig. f Paul Prior, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 24185932
Acanthus polystachyus, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. g Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 15939780
Acanthus polystachyus, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. h Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 15545256

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.

Native range 8 botanical countries

Regions where Acanthus polystachyus is native: Burundi, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan-South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda BurundiDR CongoEthiopiaKenyaRwandaSudan-South SudanTanzaniaUganda
Native distribution of Acanthus polystachyus, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Burundi BUR AFRICA
DR Congo ZAI
Ethiopia ETH
Kenya KEN
Rwanda RWA
Sudan-South Sudan SUD
Tanzania TAN
Uganda UGA

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Where it actually grows measured, from 162 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 5.5 °C 11.3 °C 17.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 20.2 °C 24.9 °C 28.7 °C
Annual rainfall 841 mm 1,079 mm 2,201 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 35 mm 102 mm 283 mm

It is barely found anywhere that freezes. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 162 research-grade observations of Acanthus polystachyus that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.

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.

  • Acanthus arboreus f. albiflorus Fiori
  • Acanthus arboreus var. pubescens Oliv.
  • Acanthus arboreus var. pubescens Thomson ex Oliv.
  • Acanthus flamandii De Wild.
  • Acanthus pubescens (Oliv.) Engl.
  • Acanthus ugandensis C.B.Clarke
  • Dilivaria polystachya (Delile) Endl.
  • Zonablephis polistachys (Delile) Raf.
  • Zonablephis polystachius (Delile) Raf.
  • Zonablephis polystachyus (Delile) Raf.

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.
  3. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.