Adenostemma lavenia(L.) Kuntze

common medicineplant

WFO wfo-0000034422 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Adenostemma lavenia, photographed by Dinesh Valke
fig. a Dinesh Valke, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2021-11-20 / obs. 170180703

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 25 botanical countries

Regions where Adenostemma lavenia is native: China South-Central, China Southeast, Hainan, Japan, Taiwan, Tibet, Andaman Is., Assam, Bangladesh, Borneo, East Himalaya, India, Jawa, Laccadive Is., Laos, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicobar Is., Pakistan, South China Sea, Sri Lanka, Sulawesi, Sumatera, Thailand, West Himalaya China South-CentralChina SoutheastHainanJapanTaiwanTibetAssamBangladeshBorneoEast HimalayaIndiaJawaLaosMyanmarNepalPakistanSri LankaSulawesiSumateraThailandWest Himalaya Andaman Is.Laccadive Is.Nicobar Is.South China Sea
Native distribution of Adenostemma lavenia, 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. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Andaman Is. AND ASIA-TROPICAL
Assam ASS
Bangladesh BAN
Borneo BOR
East Himalaya EHM
India IND
Jawa JAW
Laccadive Is. LDV
Laos LAO
Myanmar MYA
Nepal NEP
Nicobar Is. NCB
Pakistan PAK
South China Sea SCS
Sri Lanka SRL
Sulawesi SUL
Sumatera SUM
Thailand THA
West Himalaya WHM
China South-Central CHC ASIA-TEMPERATE
China Southeast CHS
Hainan CHH
Japan JAP
Taiwan TAI
Tibet CHT

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.

Flowering 37 in flower of 39 examined

Proportion of examined Adenostemma lavenia in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 1 2 too few examined
Feb 0 0 too few examined
Mar 2 2 too few examined
Apr 0 0 too few examined
May 0 0 too few examined
Jun 0 0 too few examined
Jul 1 1 too few examined
Aug 1 1 too few examined
Sep 4 4 too few examined
Oct 13 13 100% 77% to 100%
Nov 13 13 100% 77% to 100%
Dec 2 3 too few examined

Peak flowering in Oct. Each bar is the share of Adenostemma lavenia observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 37 of 39 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 10 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Where it actually grows measured, from 289 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 1.9 °C 9.2 °C 17.9 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 21.1 °C 26.7 °C 31.2 °C
Annual rainfall 1,922 mm 3,846 mm 4,602 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 97 mm 246 mm 759 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 289 research-grade observations of Adenostemma lavenia 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. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 36 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.

  • Adenostemma angustifolium Edgew.
  • Adenostemma aquaticum D.Don
  • Adenostemma elatum D.Don
  • Adenostemma erectum (Sw.) DC.
  • Adenostemma fastigiatum (Blume) DC.
  • Adenostemma fastigiatum var. fastigiatum
  • Adenostemma latifolium D.Don
  • Adenostemma lavenia var. aquaticum (D.Don) Kuntze
  • Adenostemma lavenia var. typicum J.Kost.
  • Adenostemma lavenia var. viscosum (J.R.Forst. & G.Forst.) M.R.Almeida
  • Adenostemma leiocarpum DC.
  • Adenostemma macrophyllum var. repens (Blume) DC.
  • Adenostemma rivale Dalzell
  • Adenostemma rivale Dalz.
  • Adenostemma rugosum DC.
  • Adenostemma viscosum var. angustifolium C.B.Clarke
  • Adenostemma viscosum var. angustifolium Hook.f.
  • Adenostemma viscosum var. commersonii Cass.
  • Adenostemma viscosum var. elatum (D.Don) C.B.Clarke
  • Adenostemma viscosum var. fastigiatum (Blume) Blume ex C.B.Clarke
  • Adenostemma viscosum var. latifolium (D.Don) C.B.Clarke
  • Adenostemma viscosum var. lavenia Hook.f.
  • Adenostemma viscosum var. microcephalum (DC.) C.B.Clarke
  • Adenostemma viscosum var. reticulatum (DC.) Hook.f.

and 12 more.

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. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. 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.