Acokanthera oppositifolia(Lam.) Codd

WFO wfo-0000336130 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Acokanthera oppositifolia, photographed by Andrew Gillespie
fig. a Andrew Gillespie, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-03-27 / obs. 184866973
Acokanthera oppositifolia, photographed by Andrew Gillespie
fig. b Andrew Gillespie, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 184887668
Acokanthera oppositifolia, photographed by Nicola van Berkel
fig. c Nicola van Berkel, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 167005134
Acokanthera oppositifolia, photographed by Matthew Fainman
fig. d Matthew Fainman, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 159805991
Acokanthera oppositifolia, photographed by Matthew Fainman
fig. e Matthew Fainman, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 159806334
Acokanthera oppositifolia, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. f Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 137481062
Acokanthera oppositifolia, photographed by Nicola van Berkel
fig. g Nicola van Berkel, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 99031298
Acokanthera oppositifolia, photographed by Ludwig Muller
fig. h Ludwig Muller, CC0 1.0 / obs. 98372404

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.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
Smithsonian, US National Herbarium
Accession
US 631080
Filed as
Acokanthera oppositifolia (Lam.) Codd
Det. by
Leeuwenberg, A. J. M.
Collected
E. A. Mearns 1909-08-16
Origin
KE
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC0 1.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 11 botanical countries

Regions where Acokanthera oppositifolia is native: Cape Provinces, DR Congo, Eswatini, Kenya, KwaZulu-Natal, Malawi, Mozambique, Northern Provinces, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe Cape ProvincesDR CongoEswatiniKenyaKwaZulu-NatalMalawiMozambiqueNorthern ProvincesTanzaniaZambiaZimbabwe
Native distribution of Acokanthera oppositifolia, 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
Cape Provinces CPP AFRICA
DR Congo ZAI
Eswatini SWZ
Kenya KEN
KwaZulu-Natal NAT
Malawi MLW
Mozambique MOZ
Northern Provinces TVL
Tanzania TAN
Zambia ZAM
Zimbabwe ZIM

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 404 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 2.5 °C 8.4 °C 14.4 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 22.7 °C 25.7 °C 28.2 °C
Annual rainfall 514 mm 690 mm 1,031 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 14 mm 72 mm 175 mm

It is found where winters are cool but frost is light or absent. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 404 research-grade observations of Acokanthera oppositifolia 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 12 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.

  • Acokanthera lamarkii G.Don
  • Acokanthera longiflora Stapf
  • Acokanthera rhodesica Merxm.
  • Acokanthera venenata (Burm.f.) G.Don
  • Carissa acokanthera Pichon
  • Carissa longiflora (Stapf) G.H.M.Lawr.
  • Carissa oppositifolia (Lam.) Pichon
  • Cestrum venenatum Burm.f.
  • Garcinia sciura Spirlet
  • Pleiocarpa hockii De Wild.
  • Toxicophlaea cestroides A.DC.
  • Toxicophlaea thunbergii Harv.

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.