Plate 1 figs. a–h · 6 observations
This species has been photographed under an open licence only 6 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.
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 21 botanical countries
| Region | TDWG code | Continent |
|---|---|---|
| Andaman Is. | AND | ASIA-TROPICAL |
| Bangladesh | BAN | |
| Borneo | BOR | |
| Cambodia | CBD | |
| India | IND | |
| Jawa | JAW | |
| Lesser Sunda Is. | LSI | |
| Malaya | MLY | |
| Maluku | MOL | |
| Myanmar | MYA | |
| New Guinea | NWG | |
| Nicobar Is. | NCB | |
| Philippines | PHI | |
| Sri Lanka | SRL | |
| Sulawesi | SUL | |
| Sumatera | SUM | |
| Thailand | THA | |
| Vietnam | VIE | |
| New South Wales | NSW | AUSTRALASIA |
| Northern Territory | NTA | |
| Queensland | QLD |
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 106 observations
| Condition | 5th percentile | Median | 95th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coldest month, mean daily low | 17.5 °C | 23.7 °C | 24.9 °C |
| Warmest month, mean daily high | 28.7 °C | 30.1 °C | 34.5 °C |
| Annual rainfall | 1,570 mm | 2,412 mm | 3,724 mm |
| Rainfall in the driest quarter | 2 mm | 87 mm | 500 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 106 research-grade observations of Avicennia officinalis 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 8 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.
- Avicennia obovata Griff.
- Avicennia oepata Buch.-Ham.
- Avicennia officinalis f. flaviflora Kuntze
- Avicennia officinalis f. tomentosa Kuntze
- Avicennia officinalis var. acuminata Domin
- Halodendrum thouarsii Roem. & Schult.
- Racka ovata Roem. & Schult.
- Racka torrida J.F.Gmel.
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.
- Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
- 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.