Bixa orellanaL.

Achiotelipsticktree

WFO wfo-0000342565 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Bixa orellana, photographed by Serenella Linares
fig. a Serenella Linares, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-01-02 / obs. 174601945
Bixa orellana, photographed by Anthony Batista
fig. b Anthony Batista, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 127845064
Bixa orellana, photographed by GERMAN LEONEL SARMIENTO CRUZ
fig. c GERMAN LEONEL SARMIENTO CRUZ, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 109859907
Bixa orellana, photographed by Zoltán Stekkelpak
fig. d Zoltán Stekkelpak, CC0 1.0 / obs. 108769882
Bixa orellana, photographed by Elías Torres Arroyo
fig. e Elías Torres Arroyo, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 108680528
Bixa orellana, photographed by Alexis López Hernández
fig. f Alexis López Hernández, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 109024249
Bixa orellana, photographed by Daniel Pineda Vera
fig. g Daniel Pineda Vera, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 101111933
Bixa orellana, photographed by Shami Narayanan
fig. h Shami Narayanan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 91409859

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 28 botanical countries

Regions where Bixa orellana is native: Mexico Central, Mexico Gulf, Mexico Northeast, Mexico Northwest, Mexico Southeast, Mexico Southwest, Argentina Northeast, Argentina Northwest, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil North, Brazil Northeast, Brazil Southeast, Brazil West-Central, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panamá, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Venezuela Mexico CentralMexico GulfMexico NortheastMexico NorthwestMexico SoutheastMexico SouthwestArgentina NortheastArgentina NorthwestBelizeBoliviaBrazil NorthBrazil NortheastBrazil SoutheastBrazil West-CentralColombiaCosta RicaEcuadorEl SalvadorFrench GuianaGuatemalaGuyanaHondurasNicaraguaPanamáParaguayPeruSurinameVenezuela
Native distribution of Bixa orellana, 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
Argentina Northeast AGE SOUTHERN AMERICA
Argentina Northwest AGW
Belize BLZ
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
Nicaragua NIC
Panamá PAN
Paraguay PAR
Peru PER
Suriname SUR
Venezuela VEN
Mexico Central MXC NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Gulf MXG
Mexico Northeast MXE
Mexico Northwest MXN
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 129 in flower of 330 examined

Peak flowering in Oct. Each bar is the share of Bixa orellana 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. 129 of 330 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 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 1,977 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 11.5 °C 19.2 °C 23.9 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 24.9 °C 29.6 °C 35.2 °C
Annual rainfall 921 mm 1,943 mm 4,515 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 15 mm 152 mm 685 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 1,977 research-grade observations of Bixa orellana 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 17 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.

  • Bixa acuminata Bojer
  • Bixa americana Poir.
  • Bixa katangensis Delpierre
  • Bixa odorata Ruiz & Pav. ex G.Don
  • Bixa odorata Ruiz & Pav.
  • Bixa orellana f. leiocarpa (Kuntze) J.F.Macbr.
  • Bixa orellana var. leiocarpa (Kuntze) Standl. & L.O.Williams
  • Bixa orellana var. orellana
  • Bixa orleana Noronha
  • Bixa purpurea Sweet
  • Bixa tinctaria Salisb.
  • Bixa tinctoria Salisb.
  • Bixa upatensis Ram.Goyena
  • Orellana americana (Poir.) Kuntze
  • Orellana americana var. leiocarpa Kuntze
  • Orellana americana var. normalis Kuntze
  • Orellana orellana (L.) Kuntze

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.