Cnidoscolus aconitifolius (treadsoftly)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Cnidoscolus aconitifolius, photographed by Francis Pérez — fig. a Francis Pérez, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-11-26 / obs. 170396618

Cnidoscolus aconitifolius, photographed by Sebastián de Jesús Herrera Buenfil — fig. b Sebastián de Jesús Herrera Buenfil, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 138226866

Cnidoscolus aconitifolius, photographed by Oscar Gonzalez Diaz — fig. e Oscar Gonzalez Diaz, CC0 1.0 / obs. 94499115

Cnidoscolus aconitifolius, photographed by Juan Cruzado Cortés — fig. f Juan Cruzado Cortés, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 58908170

Cnidoscolus aconitifolius, photographed by Francisco Farriols Sarabia — fig. h Francisco Farriols Sarabia, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 45624129

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: 40645
Filed as: Cnidoscolus aconitifolius (Mill.) I.M.Johnst.
Det. by: T. A. Zanoni 1994-01-01
Collected: D. E. Atha 1994-10-25
Origin: PR
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

Native distribution of Cnidoscolus aconitifolius, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Belize	BLZ	SOUTHERN AMERICA
Costa Rica	COS
El Salvador	ELS
Guatemala	GUA
Honduras	HON
Nicaragua	NIC
Panamá	PAN
Mexico Central	MXC	NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Gulf	MXG
Mexico Northeast	MXE
Mexico Southeast	MXT
Mexico Southwest	MXS

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 500 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	9.3 °C	18.9 °C	24.2 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	25.2 °C	30.2 °C	35.7 °C
Annual rainfall	708 mm	1,373 mm	3,078 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	16 mm	109 mm	307 mm

It is barely found anywhere that freezes. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 500 research-grade observations of Cnidoscolus aconitifolius 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.

Cnidoscolus chaya Lundell
Cnidoscolus chayamansa McVaugh
Cnidoscolus fragrans Pohl
Cnidoscolus longipedunculatus (Brandegee) Pax & K.Hoffm.
Cnidoscolus napifolius (Desr.) Pohl
Cnidoscolus palmatus Pohl
Cnidoscolus polyanthus I.M.Johnst.
Cnidoscolus quinquelobatus (Mill.) León
Cnidoscolus tenuilobus Lundell
Jatropha aconitifolia Mill.
Jatropha aconitifolia var. genuina Müll.Arg.
Jatropha aconitifolia var. multipartita Müll.Arg.
Jatropha aconitifolia var. palmata (Willd.) Müll.Arg.
Jatropha aconitifolia var. papaya (Medik.) Pax
Jatropha deutziiflora Croizat
Jatropha fragrans Kunth
Jatropha longepedunculata (Brandegee) Brandegee
Jatropha napifolia Desr.
Jatropha palmata Willd.
Jatropha papaya Medik.
Jatropha polyantha Pax & K.Hoffm.
Jatropha quinquelobata Mill.
Jatropha urens var. inermis Calvino
Jatropha urens var. longepedunculata Brandegee

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
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.