Coleochloa setifera(Ridl.) Gilly

WFO wfo-0000357716 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Coleochloa setifera, photographed by Matthew Fainman
fig. a Matthew Fainman, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-10-31 / obs. 166741548
Coleochloa setifera, photographed by Matthew Fainman
fig. b Matthew Fainman, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 162932136
Coleochloa setifera, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. c Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 64265685
Coleochloa setifera, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. d Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 59266640
Coleochloa setifera, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. e Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 59183537
Coleochloa setifera, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. f Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 59191496
Coleochloa setifera, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. g Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 59098406
Coleochloa setifera, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. h Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 59049167

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
Smithsonian, US National Herbarium
Accession
US 2646102
Filed as
Coleochloa setifera subsp. setifera
Det. by
Strong, Mark T., (BOT), Smithsonian Institution - National Museum of Natural History (UNITED STATES)
Collected
Collector unknown 1905-12
Origin
ZA
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC0 1.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. We link to the digitised sheet rather than rehosting it, because the holding institutions do not serve their images to third parties reliably and we are not going to show you a picture we cannot actually deliver. 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 sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 12 botanical countries

Regions where Coleochloa setifera is native: Burundi, DR Congo, Eswatini, Kenya, KwaZulu-Natal, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Northern Provinces, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe BurundiDR CongoEswatiniKenyaKwaZulu-NatalMadagascarMalawiMozambiqueNorthern ProvincesTanzaniaZambiaZimbabwe
Native distribution of Coleochloa setifera, 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
Burundi BUR AFRICA
DR Congo ZAI
Eswatini SWZ
Kenya KEN
KwaZulu-Natal NAT
Madagascar MDG
Malawi MLW
Mozambique MOZ
Northern Provinces TVL
Tanzania TAN
Zambia ZAM
Zimbabwe ZIM

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 131 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 2.2 °C 4.9 °C 10.7 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 22.7 °C 26.5 °C 28.9 °C
Annual rainfall 499 mm 729 mm 1,487 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 7 mm 18 mm 60 mm

It is found where winters are cool but frost is light or absent. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 131 research-grade observations of Coleochloa setifera 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 11 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.

  • Coleochloa oliveri (Boeckeler) Gilly
  • Coleochloa rehmanniana (C.B.Clarke) Gilly
  • Coleochloa villosula (C.B.Clarke) Gilly
  • Eriospora oliveri (Boeckeler) C.B.Clarke
  • Eriospora rehmanniana C.B.Clarke
  • Eriospora setifera (Ridl.) C.B.Clarke
  • Eriospora villosula C.B.Clarke
  • Fintelmannia setifera Ridl.
  • Trilepis oliveri Boeckeler
  • Trilepis rehmanniana Boeckeler ex C.B.Clarke
  • Trilepis setifera (Ridl.) Kuntze

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.