Boophone distichaHerb.

WFO wfo-0000761937 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Boophone disticha, photographed by bullwooding
fig. a bullwooding, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-09 / obs. 204722034
Boophone disticha, photographed by Ricus Nel
fig. b Ricus Nel, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 193587491
Boophone disticha, photographed by Shaun Swanepoel
fig. c Shaun Swanepoel, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 193198073
Boophone disticha, photographed by Di Turner
fig. d Di Turner, CC0 1.0 / obs. 199971816
Boophone disticha, photographed by Shaun Swanepoel
fig. e Shaun Swanepoel, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 185175787
Boophone disticha, photographed by Matthew Fainman
fig. f Matthew Fainman, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 183853159
Boophone disticha, photographed by Ricus Nel
fig. g Ricus Nel, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 184829732
Boophone disticha, photographed by Andrew Hankey
fig. h Andrew Hankey, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 177902605

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 20 botanical countries

Regions where Boophone disticha is native: Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Cape Provinces, DR Congo, Eswatini, Free State, Kenya, KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Northern Provinces, Rwanda, Sudan-South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe AngolaBotswanaBurundiCape ProvincesDR CongoEswatiniFree StateKenyaKwaZulu-NatalLesothoMalawiMozambiqueNamibiaNorthern ProvincesRwandaSudan-South SudanTanzaniaUgandaZambiaZimbabwe
Native distribution of Boophone disticha, 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
Angola ANG AFRICA
Botswana BOT
Burundi BUR
Cape Provinces CPP
DR Congo ZAI
Eswatini SWZ
Free State OFS
Kenya KEN
KwaZulu-Natal NAT
Lesotho LES
Malawi MLW
Mozambique MOZ
Namibia NAM
Northern Provinces TVL
Rwanda RWA
Sudan-South Sudan SUD
Tanzania TAN
Uganda UGA
Zambia ZAM
Zimbabwe ZIM

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 460 in flower of 868 examined

Peak flowering in Oct. Each bar is the share of Boophone disticha 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. 460 of 868 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 2,026 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 1.5 °C 5.0 °C 13.0 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 23.1 °C 26.6 °C 30.6 °C
Annual rainfall 292 mm 638 mm 1,112 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 12 mm 44 mm 130 mm

It is found where winters are cool but frost is light or absent. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 2,026 research-grade observations of Boophone disticha 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 15 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.

  • Amaryllis disticha L.f.
  • Amaryllis toxicaria (L.f. ex Aiton) D.Dietr.
  • Boophone intermedia M.Roem.
  • Boophone longepedicellata Pax
  • Boophone toxicaria (L.f. ex Aiton) Herb.
  • Brunsvigia ciliaris [Ker-Gawl.]
  • Brunsvigia disticha Sweet
  • Brunsvigia rautanenii Baker
  • Brunsvigia toxicaria [Ker-Gawl.]
  • Haemanthus ciliaris L.
  • Haemanthus distichus L.f. ex Savage
  • Haemanthus lemairei De Wild.
  • Haemanthus robustus Pax
  • Haemanthus sinuatus Thunb.Mus.Ups. ex Schult.f.
  • Haemanthus toxicarius L.f. ex Aiton

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.