Agathosma imbricata(L.) Willd.

sand buchutile buchu

WFO wfo-0000523481 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Agathosma imbricata, photographed by Jeremy Gilmore
fig. a Jeremy Gilmore, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-03-27 / obs. 117755532

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 1 botanical country

Regions where Agathosma imbricata is native: Cape Provinces Cape Provinces
Native distribution of Agathosma imbricata, 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

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 335 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 6.9 °C 11.0 °C 12.9 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 19.6 °C 22.4 °C 27.8 °C
Annual rainfall 452 mm 773 mm 1,255 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 35 mm 85 mm 137 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 335 research-grade observations of Agathosma imbricata 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 Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.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 31 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.

  • Agathosma acuminata (J.C.Wendl.) Willd.
  • Agathosma acuminata var. candollei Regel
  • Agathosma acuminata var. subcordata (Hoffmanns.) Regel
  • Agathosma cordata Hoffmanns.
  • Agathosma gracilipetala Dümmer
  • Agathosma juncea Hoffmanns.
  • Agathosma lambii Dümmer
  • Agathosma lycopodioides Bartl. & H.L.Wendl.
  • Agathosma obtusata G.Don
  • Agathosma polyphylla C.Presl
  • Agathosma pseudimbricata Dümmer
  • Agathosma reflexa Link
  • Agathosma subcordata Hoffmanns.
  • Agathosma thymifolia Hoffmanns.
  • Agathosma vestita Willd. ex Roem. & Schult.
  • Agathosma virgata
  • Bucco acuminata J.C.Wendl.
  • Bucco imbricata (L.) J.C.Wendl.
  • Bucco obtusata J.C.Wendl.
  • Bucco vestita Roem. & Schult.
  • Diosma acuminata (Wendl.) C.C.Gmel.
  • Diosma cordata Mart.
  • Diosma imbricata Thunb.
  • Diosma lycopodioides Willd. ex Roem. & Schult.

and 7 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.