Brownleea parvifloraHarv. ex Lindl.

WFO wfo-0000436842 Accepted WFO 2026-06 5 photographs CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–e · 2 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 2 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.

Brownleea parviflora, photographed by Andrew Hankey
fig. a Andrew Hankey, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2018-01-21 / obs. 13127740
Brownleea parviflora, photographed by Andrew Hankey
fig. b Andrew Hankey, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 15885782
Brownleea parviflora, photographed by Andrew Hankey
fig. c Andrew Hankey, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 13127738
Brownleea parviflora, photographed by Andrew Hankey
fig. d Andrew Hankey, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 15885785
Brownleea parviflora, photographed by Andrew Hankey
fig. e Andrew Hankey, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 13127741

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 14 botanical countries

Regions where Brownleea parviflora is native: Cameroon, Cape Provinces, DR Congo, Eswatini, Free State, Kenya, KwaZulu-Natal, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Northern Provinces, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe CameroonCape ProvincesDR CongoEswatiniFree StateKenyaKwaZulu-NatalMadagascarMalawiMozambiqueNorthern ProvincesTanzaniaZambiaZimbabwe
Native distribution of Brownleea parviflora, 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
Cameroon CMN AFRICA
Cape Provinces CPP
DR Congo ZAI
Eswatini SWZ
Free State OFS
Kenya KEN
KwaZulu-Natal NAT
Madagascar MDG
Malawi MLW
Mozambique MOZ
Northern Provinces TVL
Tanzania TAN
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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 56 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -2.3 °C 0.3 °C 6.6 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 19.8 °C 21.6 °C 24.9 °C
Annual rainfall 785 mm 940 mm 1,810 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 23 mm 44 mm 88 mm

It is found where winters bring light frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 56 research-grade observations of Brownleea parviflora 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 9 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.

  • Brownleea alpina (Hook.f.) N.E.Br.
  • Brownleea apetala (Kraenzl.) N.E.Br.
  • Brownleea gracilis Schltr.
  • Brownleea perrieri Schltr.
  • Brownleea transvaalensis Schltr.
  • Disa alpina Hook.f.
  • Disa apetala Kraenzl.
  • Disa parviflora (Harv. ex Lindl.) Rchb.f.
  • Disa preussii Kraenzl.

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.