Apeiba tibourbouAubl.

WFO wfo-0000539840 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Apeiba tibourbou, photographed by Vincent A. Vos
fig. a Vincent A. Vos, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-31 / obs. 205301982

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
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
1487461
Filed as
Apeiba tibourbou Aubl.
Det. by
L. J. Dorr 2011-01-01
Collected
T. B. Croat 2001-12-02
Origin
BR
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

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 27 botanical countries

Regions where Apeiba tibourbou is native: Mexico Central, Mexico Gulf, Mexico Northeast, Mexico Southeast, Mexico Southwest, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil North, Brazil Northeast, Brazil Southeast, Brazil West-Central, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panamá, Peru, Suriname, Trinidad-Tobago, Venezuela, Windward Is. Mexico CentralMexico GulfMexico NortheastMexico SoutheastMexico SouthwestBelizeBoliviaBrazil NorthBrazil NortheastBrazil SoutheastBrazil West-CentralColombiaCosta RicaEcuadorEl SalvadorFrench GuianaGuatemalaGuyanaHondurasJamaicaNicaraguaPanamáPeruSurinameTrinidad-TobagoVenezuela Windward Is.
Native distribution of Apeiba tibourbou, 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
Belize BLZ SOUTHERN AMERICA
Bolivia BOL
Brazil North BZN
Brazil Northeast BZE
Brazil Southeast BZL
Brazil West-Central BZC
Colombia CLM
Costa Rica COS
Ecuador ECU
El Salvador ELS
French Guiana FRG
Guatemala GUA
Guyana GUY
Honduras HON
Jamaica JAM
Nicaragua NIC
Panamá PAN
Peru PER
Suriname SUR
Trinidad-Tobago TRT
Venezuela VEN
Windward Is. WIN
Mexico Central MXC NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Gulf MXG
Mexico Northeast MXE
Mexico Southeast MXT
Mexico Southwest MXS

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 31 in flower of 77 examined

Proportion of examined Apeiba tibourbou in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 4 9 44% 19% to 73%
Feb 0 5 0% 0% to 43%
Mar 0 7 0% 0% to 35%
Apr 2 8 25% 7% to 59%
May 4 7 57% 25% to 84%
Jun 5 5 100% 57% to 100%
Jul 4 8 50% 22% to 78%
Aug 3 4 too few examined
Sep 2 2 too few examined
Oct 3 10 30% 11% to 60%
Nov 3 6 50% 19% to 81%
Dec 1 6 17% 3% to 56%

Peak flowering in Jun. Each bar is the share of Apeiba tibourbou 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. 31 of 77 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 2 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 409 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 15.2 °C 22.5 °C 24.5 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 27.4 °C 29.8 °C 33.3 °C
Annual rainfall 1,280 mm 2,937 mm 5,512 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 23 mm 157 mm 416 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 409 research-grade observations of Apeiba tibourbou 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 4 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.

  • Apeiba cimbalaria Arruda
  • Apeiba hirsuta Lam.
  • Aubletia tibourbou (Aubl.) Willd.
  • Aubletia tiburbu Sw.

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.