Amorphophallus paeoniifolius(Dennst.) Nicolson

Elephant foot yamWhitespot giant arumwhitespot giant arum

WFO wfo-0000965117 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Amorphophallus paeoniifolius, photographed by Wouter Van Landuyt
fig. a Wouter Van Landuyt, CC0 1.0 / 2022-02-28 / obs. 183257570

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 Amorphophallus paeoniifolius is native: China South-Central, China Southeast, Hainan, Taiwan, Andaman Is., Assam, Bangladesh, Borneo, Cambodia, East Himalaya, India, Jawa, Laos, Lesser Sunda Is., Malaya, Maluku, Myanmar, New Guinea, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Sulawesi, Sumatera, Thailand, Vietnam, Northern Territory China South-CentralChina SoutheastHainanTaiwanAssamBangladeshBorneoCambodiaEast HimalayaIndiaJawaLaosLesser Sunda Is.MalayaMalukuMyanmarNew GuineaPhilippinesSri LankaSulawesiSumateraThailandVietnamNorthern Territory Andaman Is.
Native distribution of Amorphophallus paeoniifolius, 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
Cambodia CBD
East Himalaya EHM
India IND
Jawa JAW
Laos LAO
Lesser Sunda Is. LSI
Malaya MLY
Maluku MOL
Myanmar MYA
New Guinea NWG
Philippines PHI
Sri Lanka SRL
Sulawesi SUL
Sumatera SUM
Thailand THA
Vietnam VIE
China South-Central CHC ASIA-TEMPERATE
China Southeast CHS
Hainan CHH
Taiwan TAI
Northern Territory NTA AUSTRALASIA

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 76 in flower of 163 examined

Proportion of examined Amorphophallus paeoniifolius in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 3 9 33% 12% to 65%
Feb 1 5 20% 4% to 62%
Mar 3 7 43% 16% to 75%
Apr 6 16 38% 18% to 61%
May 19 30 63% 46% to 78%
Jun 13 19 68% 46% to 85%
Jul 4 13 31% 13% to 58%
Aug 3 7 43% 16% to 75%
Sep 2 4 too few examined
Oct 5 9 56% 27% to 81%
Nov 11 28 39% 24% to 58%
Dec 6 16 38% 18% to 61%

Peak flowering in Jun. Each bar is the share of Amorphophallus paeoniifolius 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. 76 of 163 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. One month has fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for it. 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 580 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 12.1 °C 19.2 °C 24.5 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 27.6 °C 31.4 °C 36.8 °C
Annual rainfall 1,102 mm 1,935 mm 3,730 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 4 mm 62 mm 356 mm

It is not found anywhere that gets close to freezing. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 580 research-grade observations of Amorphophallus paeoniifolius 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 34 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.

  • Amorphophallus campanulatus Decne.
  • Amorphophallus campanulatus f. darnleyensis F.M.Bailey
  • Amorphophallus campanulatus var. blumei Prain
  • Amorphophallus chatty André
  • Amorphophallus decurrens (Blanco) Kunth
  • Amorphophallus dixenii K.Larsen & S.S.Larsen
  • Amorphophallus dubius Blume
  • Amorphophallus giganteus Blume
  • Amorphophallus gigantiflorus Hayata
  • Amorphophallus malaccensis Ridl.
  • Amorphophallus micro-appendiculatus Engl.
  • Amorphophallus paeoniifolius var. campanulatus Sivad.
  • Amorphophallus rex Prain
  • Amorphophallus rex Prain ex Hook.f.
  • Amorphophallus sativus Blume
  • Amorphophallus virosus N.E.Br.
  • Arum campanulatum Roxb.
  • Arum decurrens Blanco
  • Arum phalliferum Oken
  • Arum rumphii Gaudich.
  • Arum rumphii Oken
  • Candarum hookeri Schott
  • Candarum roxburghii Schott
  • Candarum rumphii Schott

and 10 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.