Caylusea hexagyna(Forssk.) M.L.Green

WFO wfo-0000591652 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

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.

Caylusea hexagyna, photographed by Santiago Martín-Bravo
fig. a Santiago Martín-Bravo, CC BY 4.0 / 2014-04-17 / obs. 104381227

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 23 botanical countries

Regions where Caylusea hexagyna is native: Algeria, Cape Verde, Chad, Egypt, Eritrea, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Socotra, Somalia, Sudan-South Sudan, Western Sahara, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon-Syria, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Sinai, Yemen, India AlgeriaChadEgyptEritreaLibyaMaliMauritaniaMoroccoNigerSomaliaSudan-South SudanWestern SaharaIranIraqKuwaitLebanon-SyriaPalestineSaudi ArabiaSinaiYemenIndia Cape Verde
Native distribution of Caylusea hexagyna, 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
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Cape Verde CVI
Chad CHA
Egypt EGY
Eritrea ERI
Libya LBY
Mali MLI
Mauritania MTN
Morocco MOR
Niger NGR
Socotra SOC
Somalia SOM
Sudan-South Sudan SUD
Western Sahara WSA
Iran IRN ASIA-TEMPERATE
Iraq IRQ
Kuwait KUW
Lebanon-Syria LBS
Palestine PAL
Saudi Arabia SAU
Sinai SIN
Yemen YEM
India IND ASIA-TROPICAL

Not drawn on the map: Socotra. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is listed rather than guessed at.

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 42 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 0.4 °C 6.7 °C 20.0 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 25.6 °C 33.5 °C 41.1 °C
Annual rainfall 35 mm 138 mm 271 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 0 mm 2 mm 32 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 42 research-grade observations of Caylusea hexagyna 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 21 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.

  • Caylusea canescens A.St.-Hil.
  • Caylusea canescens var. foliosa Müll.Arg.
  • Caylusea canescens var. glabrescens Müll.Arg.
  • Caylusea canescens var. prostrata Post
  • Caylusea canescens var. rigida Müll.Arg.
  • Caylusea hexagyna var. glabra Maire
  • Caylusea hexagyna var. glabrescens (Müll.Arg.) Maire
  • Caylusea hexagyna var. papillosa Maire
  • Caylusea hexagyna var. rigida (Müll.Arg.) Maire
  • Caylusea jaberi Abedin
  • Caylusea moquiniana Webb
  • Hexastylis arabica Raf.
  • Hexastylis canescens Raf.
  • Reseda canescens L.
  • Reseda difformis Moench
  • Reseda fruticosa Ehrenb. ex Müll.Arg.
  • Reseda hexagyna Forssk.
  • Reseda mediterranea L.
  • Reseda podocarpos Viv.
  • Syntrophe canescens Ehrenb. ex Müll.Arg.
  • Syntrophe fruticosa Ehrenb. ex Müll.Arg.

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.