Cecropia pachystachyaTrécul

Ambay pumpwood

WFO wfo-0000592291 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Cecropia pachystachya, photographed by Patricio Cowper Coles
fig. a Patricio Cowper Coles, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-04-30 / obs. 194893486

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 7 botanical countries

Regions where Cecropia pachystachya is native: Argentina Northeast, Brazil North, Brazil Northeast, Brazil South, Brazil Southeast, Brazil West-Central, Paraguay Argentina NortheastBrazil NorthBrazil NortheastBrazil SouthBrazil SoutheastBrazil West-CentralParaguay
Native distribution of Cecropia pachystachya, 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
Argentina Northeast AGE SOUTHERN AMERICA
Brazil North BZN
Brazil Northeast BZE
Brazil South BZS
Brazil Southeast BZL
Brazil West-Central BZC
Paraguay PAR

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 990 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 10.8 °C 13.1 °C 21.3 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 26.0 °C 30.0 °C 32.3 °C
Annual rainfall 1,221 mm 1,660 mm 2,834 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 28 mm 178 mm 546 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 990 research-grade observations of Cecropia pachystachya 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 24 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 adenopus (Mart. ex Miq.) Kuntze
  • Ambaiba carbonaria (Mart. ex Miq.) Kuntze
  • Ambaiba cinerea (Miq.) Kuntze
  • Ambaiba cyrtostachya (Miq.) Kuntze
  • Ambaiba lyratiflora (Miq.) Kuntze
  • Ambaiba lyratiloba (Miq.) Kuntze
  • Ambaiba pachystachya (Trécul) Kuntze
  • Ambaiba tenoreana Kuntze
  • Cecropia adenopus Mart. ex Miq.
  • Cecropia adenopus var. lata Snethl.
  • Cecropia adenopus var. lyratiloba Hassl.
  • Cecropia adenopus var. macrophylla Hassl.
  • Cecropia adenopus var. oblonga Snethl.
  • Cecropia adenopus var. vulgaris Hassl.
  • Cecropia ambaci Rojas Acosta
  • Cecropia carbonaria Mart. ex Miq.
  • Cecropia catarinensis Cuatrec.
  • Cecropia cinerea Miq.
  • Cecropia cyrtostachya Miq.
  • Cecropia digitata Ten. ex Miq.
  • Cecropia glauca Rojas Acosta
  • Cecropia lyratiloba Miq.
  • Cecropia lyratiloba var. nana J.C.Andrade & J.P.Pereira
  • Cecropia peltata Vell.

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. USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol CEAD2. public domain. 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.