Cleome foliosaHook.f.

yellow spiderflower

WFO wfo-0000611277 Accepted WFO 2026-06 4 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–d · 1 observation

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 1 time, 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.

Cleome foliosa, photographed by Mahomed Desai
fig. a Mahomed Desai, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-10-11 / obs. 164763950
Cleome foliosa, photographed by Mahomed Desai
fig. b Mahomed Desai, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 164763999
Cleome foliosa, photographed by Mahomed Desai
fig. c Mahomed Desai, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 164764031
Cleome foliosa, photographed by Mahomed Desai
fig. d Mahomed Desai, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 164764051

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 4 botanical countries

Regions where Cleome foliosa is native: Angola, Cape Provinces, Namibia, Nigeria AngolaCape ProvincesNamibiaNigeria
Native distribution of Cleome foliosa, 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
Namibia NAM
Nigeria NGA

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.

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.

  • Cleome dolichocarpa Gilg & Gilg-Ben.
  • Cleome johnstonii Exell & Mendonça
  • Cleome luederitziana Schinz
  • Cleome lutea (Sond.) E.Mey. ex Szyszył.
  • Cleome lutea var. polyphylla Pax
  • Cleome xanthopetala Briq.
  • Dianthera lutea (Sond.) Klotzsch
  • Kersia foliosa (Hook.f.) Roalson & J.C.Hall
  • Kersia foliosa var. lutea (Sond.) Roalson & J.C.Hall
  • Polanisia foliosa (Hook.f.) T.Durand & Schinz
  • Polanisia luederitziana Schinz
  • Polanisia lutea Sond.
  • Polanisia maximiliani Wawra

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 CLLU2. 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.