Caperonia castaneifolia(L.) A.St.-Hil.

chestnutleaf false croton

WFO wfo-0000801233 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Caperonia castaneifolia, photographed by Jay Horn
fig. a Jay Horn, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-04-02 / obs. 186111832

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
01301090
Filed as
Caperonia castaneifolia (L.) A.St.-Hil.
Det. by
S. R. Hill 1983-01-01
Collected
S. R. Hill 1983-06-28
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 25 botanical countries

Regions where Caperonia castaneifolia is native: Mexico Central, Mexico Gulf, Mexico Southeast, Mexico Southwest, Argentina Northeast, Argentina Northwest, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil North, Brazil West-Central, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panamá, Paraguay, Uruguay, Venezuela, Windward Is. Mexico CentralMexico GulfMexico SoutheastMexico SouthwestArgentina NortheastArgentina NorthwestBelizeBoliviaBrazil NorthBrazil West-CentralColombiaCosta RicaCubaDominican RepublicEcuadorGuyanaHaitiHondurasJamaicaNicaraguaPanamáParaguayUruguayVenezuela Windward Is.
Native distribution of Caperonia castaneifolia, 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. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Argentina Northeast AGE SOUTHERN AMERICA
Argentina Northwest AGW
Belize BLZ
Bolivia BOL
Brazil North BZN
Brazil West-Central BZC
Colombia CLM
Costa Rica COS
Cuba CUB
Dominican Republic DOM
Ecuador ECU
Guyana GUY
Haiti HAI
Honduras HON
Jamaica JAM
Nicaragua NIC
Panamá PAN
Paraguay PAR
Uruguay URU
Venezuela VEN
Windward Is. WIN
Mexico Central MXC NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Gulf MXG
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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 197 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 9.9 °C 15.9 °C 23.8 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 29.4 °C 30.8 °C 32.1 °C
Annual rainfall 1,321 mm 1,469 mm 2,926 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 105 mm 139 mm 262 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 197 research-grade observations of Caperonia castaneifolia 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 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.

  • Argythamnia castaneifolia (L.) Kuntze
  • Argythamnia paludosa (Klotzsch) Kuntze
  • Caperonia angusta S.F.Blake
  • Caperonia cubensis M.R.Schomb.
  • Caperonia nervosa A.Rich.
  • Caperonia paludosa Klotzsch
  • Caperonia panamensis Klotzsch
  • Caperonia panamensis Pax & K.Hoffm.
  • Caperonia stenomeres S.F.Blake
  • Croton castaneifolius L.
  • Croton nervosus Rich. ex A.Rich.
  • Croton palustris Kunth
  • Ditaxis castaneifolia (L.) Baill.
  • Meterana castaneifolia (L.) Raf.
  • Tournesol castaneifolia (L.) M.Gómez

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.