Catha edulis(Vahl) Forssk. ex Endl.

khat

WFO wfo-0000590815 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 4 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 4 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.

Catha edulis, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. a Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2021-06-11 / obs. 141013741
Catha edulis, photographed by Mattia Menchetti
fig. b Mattia Menchetti, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 26388644
Catha edulis, photographed by Ryan van Huyssteen
fig. c Ryan van Huyssteen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 15631300
Catha edulis, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. d Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 141013791
Catha edulis, photographed by Mattia Menchetti
fig. e Mattia Menchetti, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 26388645
Catha edulis, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. f Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 141013828
Catha edulis, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. g Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 140454804
Catha edulis, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. h Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 140454868

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
41748
Filed as
Catha edulis Forssk.
Det. by
H. T. Beck 1993-01-01
Collected
H. T. Beck 1990-09-08
Origin
US
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 16 botanical countries

Regions where Catha edulis is native: Angola, Cape Provinces, DR Congo, Eritrea, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Kenya, KwaZulu-Natal, Malawi, Mozambique, Northern Provinces, Sudan-South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe AngolaCape ProvincesDR CongoEritreaEswatiniEthiopiaKenyaKwaZulu-NatalMalawiMozambiqueNorthern ProvincesSudan-South SudanTanzaniaUgandaZambiaZimbabwe
Native distribution of Catha 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
Angola ANG AFRICA
Cape Provinces CPP
DR Congo ZAI
Eritrea ERI
Eswatini SWZ
Ethiopia ETH
Kenya KEN
KwaZulu-Natal NAT
Malawi MLW
Mozambique MOZ
Northern Provinces TVL
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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 165 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 3.7 °C 5.9 °C 13.4 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 23.3 °C 26.0 °C 28.2 °C
Annual rainfall 516 mm 966 mm 1,918 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 13 mm 41 mm 151 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 165 research-grade observations of Catha 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.

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.

  • Catha forskalii A.Rich.
  • Catha glauca (Eckl. & Zeyh.) A.Chev.
  • Catha inermis J.F.Gmel.
  • Celastrus edulis Vahl
  • Celastrus tsaad Ferreira & Galeotti ex Walp.
  • Dillonia abyssinica Sacleux
  • Hartogia thea E.Mey.
  • Methyscophyllum glaucum Eckl. & Zeyh.
  • Trigonotheca serrata Hochst.

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.