Cespedesia spathulata(Ruiz & Pav.) Planch.

WFO wfo-0000598623 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 7 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 7 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.

Cespedesia spathulata, photographed by GERMAN LEONEL SARMIENTO CRUZ
fig. a GERMAN LEONEL SARMIENTO CRUZ, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-04-12 / obs. 188387613

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
02175423
Filed as
Cespedesia spathulata (Ruiz & Pav.) Planch.
Det. by
R. L. Liesner 2012-01-01
Collected
C. A. Cid Ferreira 1986-03-11
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 12 botanical countries

Regions where Cespedesia spathulata is native: Bolivia, Brazil North, Brazil West-Central, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guyana, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panamá, Peru, Venezuela BoliviaBrazil NorthBrazil West-CentralColombiaCosta RicaEcuadorGuyanaHondurasNicaraguaPanamáPeruVenezuela
Native distribution of Cespedesia spathulata, 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
Bolivia BOL SOUTHERN AMERICA
Brazil North BZN
Brazil West-Central BZC
Colombia CLM
Costa Rica COS
Ecuador ECU
Guyana GUY
Honduras HON
Nicaragua NIC
Panamá PAN
Peru PER
Venezuela VEN

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 102 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 14.7 °C 19.5 °C 23.7 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 25.3 °C 28.3 °C 30.4 °C
Annual rainfall 1,804 mm 3,617 mm 4,449 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 111 mm 323 mm 757 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 102 research-grade observations of Cespedesia spathulata 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 13 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.

  • Cespedesia amazonica Huber
  • Cespedesia bonplandii Goudot
  • Cespedesia brasiliana Tiegh.
  • Cespedesia excelsa Rusby
  • Cespedesia macrophylla Seem.
  • Cespedesia repanda (Bonpl. ex Kunth) Tiegh.
  • Cespedesia repanda var. lanceolata Cuatrec.
  • Cespedesia scandens (Tiegh.) Dwyer
  • Cespedesia sprucei Tiegh.
  • Fournieria scandens Tiegh.
  • Godoya repanda Bonpl. ex Kunth
  • Godoya scandens E.Fourn.
  • Godoya spathulata Ruiz & Pav.

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.