Cecropia obtusaTrécul

WFO wfo-0000592285 Accepted WFO 2026-06 4 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–d · 4 separate observations

Cecropia obtusa, photographed by Gerry van Tonder
fig. a Gerry van Tonder, CC BY 4.0 / 2019-06-23 / obs. 43204472
Cecropia obtusa, photographed by Gerry van Tonder
fig. b Gerry van Tonder, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 52413949
Cecropia obtusa, photographed by Gerry van Tonder
fig. c Gerry van Tonder, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 45014852
Cecropia obtusa, photographed by Denis Bastianelli
fig. d Denis Bastianelli, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 112603980

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 5 botanical countries

Regions where Cecropia obtusa is native: Brazil North, Brazil Northeast, French Guiana, Guyana, Suriname Brazil NorthBrazil NortheastFrench GuianaGuyanaSuriname
Native distribution of Cecropia obtusa, 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
Brazil North BZN SOUTHERN AMERICA
Brazil Northeast BZE
French Guiana FRG
Guyana GUY
Suriname SUR

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 144 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 20.9 °C 22.6 °C 23.8 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 29.5 °C 30.8 °C 33.0 °C
Annual rainfall 2,106 mm 3,130 mm 3,603 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 201 mm 252 mm 319 mm

It is not found anywhere that gets close to freezing. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 144 research-grade observations of Cecropia obtusa 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 3 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.

  • Ambaiba obtusa (Trécul) Kuntze
  • Cecropia lisboana Snethl.
  • Coilotapalus obtusa (Trécul) 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. 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.