Bomarea edulis(Tussac) Herb.

WFO wfo-0000761716 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Bomarea edulis, photographed by Denis Zabin
fig. a Denis Zabin, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-12-11 / obs. 172386704
Bomarea edulis, photographed by Edson Luis Fabro Gasperin
fig. b Edson Luis Fabro Gasperin, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 111137671
Bomarea edulis, photographed by Vincent A. Vos
fig. c Vincent A. Vos, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 68488228
Bomarea edulis, photographed by Zazil Dellamary
fig. d Zazil Dellamary, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 71837476
Bomarea edulis, photographed by Jim Morefield
fig. e Jim Morefield, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 57692667
Bomarea edulis, photographed by Jim Morefield
fig. f Jim Morefield, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 57692692
Bomarea edulis, photographed by Alan Rockefeller
fig. g Alan Rockefeller, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 24008757
Bomarea edulis, photographed by Said Jimenez
fig. h Said Jimenez, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 22818413

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
910676
Filed as
Bomarea edulis (Tussac) Herb.
Det. by
R. E. Gereau 1988-01-01
Collected
D. Philcox 1967-12-09
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 32 botanical countries

Regions where Bomarea edulis is native: Mexico Central, Mexico Gulf, Mexico Northeast, Mexico Southeast, Mexico Southwest, Argentina Northeast, Argentina Northwest, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil Northeast, Brazil South, Brazil Southeast, Brazil West-Central, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panamá, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Suriname, Trinidad-Tobago, Venezuela Mexico CentralMexico GulfMexico NortheastMexico SoutheastMexico SouthwestArgentina NortheastArgentina NorthwestBelizeBoliviaBrazil NortheastBrazil SouthBrazil SoutheastBrazil West-CentralColombiaCosta RicaCubaDominican RepublicEl SalvadorFrench GuianaGuatemalaGuyanaHaitiHondurasJamaicaNicaraguaPanamáParaguayPeruPuerto RicoSurinameTrinidad-TobagoVenezuela
Native distribution of Bomarea edulis, 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 Northeast BZE
Brazil South BZS
Brazil Southeast BZL
Brazil West-Central BZC
Colombia CLM
Costa Rica COS
Cuba CUB
Dominican Republic DOM
El Salvador ELS
French Guiana FRG
Guatemala GUA
Guyana GUY
Haiti HAI
Honduras HON
Jamaica JAM
Nicaragua NIC
Panamá PAN
Paraguay PAR
Peru PER
Puerto Rico PUE
Suriname SUR
Trinidad-Tobago TRT
Venezuela VEN
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 280 in flower of 362 examined

Peak flowering in Sep. Each bar is the share of Bomarea edulis 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. 280 of 362 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 730 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 4.4 °C 7.9 °C 19.3 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 20.6 °C 26.2 °C 31.2 °C
Annual rainfall 770 mm 1,415 mm 2,377 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 18 mm 38 mm 323 mm

It is barely found anywhere that freezes. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 730 research-grade observations of Bomarea edulis 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 47 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.

  • Alstroemeria affinis M.Martens & Galeotti
  • Alstroemeria edulis Tussac
  • Alstroemeria gloriosa Schltdl. & Cham.
  • Alstroemeria grandifolia Kunth
  • Alstroemeria hirtella Kunth
  • Alstroemeria jacquesiana Lem.
  • Alstroemeria miniata M.Martens & Galeotti
  • Alstroemeria pauciflora Lem.
  • Alstroemeria salsilla Vell.
  • Alstroemeria salsilloides Mart.
  • Alstroemeria sepium Schott ex Seub.
  • Bomarea affinis (M.Martens & Galeotti) Kunth
  • Bomarea bakeriana Kraenzl.
  • Bomarea brauniana Schenk
  • Bomarea caraccensis Herb.
  • Bomarea edulis var. furcata (Klotzsch ex Kunth) Kuntze
  • Bomarea edulis var. grandis Herb.
  • Bomarea edulis var. hirtula Suess.
  • Bomarea edulis var. maranensis Herb.
  • Bomarea edulis var. parvifolia (Seub.) Hoehne
  • Bomarea furcata Klotzsch ex Kunth
  • Bomarea gloriosa (Cham. & Schltdl.) M.Roem.
  • Bomarea grandifolia (Kunth) Herb.
  • Bomarea guianensis Kraenzl.

and 23 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. 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.