Aspidoglossum gracile

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 3 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 3 times, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Aspidoglossum gracile, photographed by linkie — fig. a linkie, CC BY 4.0 / 2019-03-09 / obs. 32625807

Aspidoglossum gracile, photographed by kevin koen — fig. c kevin koen, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 103873691

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: Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Accession: K000234661
Filed as: Aspidoglossum gracile (E.Mey.) Kupicha
Det. by: Kupicha, F.
Collected: Burchell, W.J. 1814-12-21
Origin: ZA
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 3 botanical countries

Native distribution of Aspidoglossum gracile, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Cape Provinces	CPP	AFRICA
KwaZulu-Natal	NAT
Lesotho	LES

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.

Also published as 24 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.

Gomphocarpus gracilis (E.Mey.) D.Dietr.
Lagarinthus exilis Decne.
Lagarinthus gracilis E.Mey.
Lagarinthus microdon Turcz.
Rhinolobium lineare Decne.
Rhinolobium tenue Arn.
Schizoglossum addoense N.E.Br.
Schizoglossum bolusii Schltr.
Schizoglossum bowkeriae N.E.Br.
Schizoglossum buchananii N.E.Br.
Schizoglossum burchellii N.E.Br.
Schizoglossum dregei N.E.Br.
Schizoglossum exile Schltr.
Schizoglossum filifolium Schltr.
Schizoglossum filipes Schltr.
Schizoglossum guthriei Schltr.
Schizoglossum lunatum Schltr.
Schizoglossum monticola Schltr.
Schizoglossum parcum N.E.Br.
Schizoglossum parvulum Schltr.
Schizoglossum parvulum var. parvulum
Schizoglossum parvulum var. sessile N.E.Br.
Schizoglossum tenue (Arn.) Druce
Schizoglossum tomentosum Schltr.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
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.