Coleus lasianthusGürke

WFO wfo-0000914856 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 3 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 3 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.

Coleus lasianthus, photographed by Andrew Hankey
fig. a Andrew Hankey, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2007-04-24 / obs. 18768957
Coleus lasianthus, photographed by Wynand Uys
fig. b Wynand Uys, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 69630797
Coleus lasianthus, photographed by Wynand Uys
fig. c Wynand Uys, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 69631394
Coleus lasianthus, photographed by Andrew Hankey
fig. d Andrew Hankey, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 18768965
Coleus lasianthus, photographed by Wynand Uys
fig. e Wynand Uys, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 69631389
Coleus lasianthus, photographed by Andrew Hankey
fig. f Andrew Hankey, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 18768999
Coleus lasianthus, photographed by Nic Knott-Craig
fig. g Nic Knott-Craig, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 119092729
Coleus lasianthus, photographed by Nic Knott-Craig
fig. h Nic Knott-Craig, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 119092740

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 15 botanical countries

Regions where Coleus lasianthus is native: Botswana, Caprivi Strip, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Kenya, KwaZulu-Natal, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Northern Provinces, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe BotswanaCaprivi StripEswatiniEthiopiaKenyaKwaZulu-NatalMadagascarMalawiMozambiqueNamibiaNorthern ProvincesTanzaniaUgandaZambiaZimbabwe
Native distribution of Coleus lasianthus, 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
Botswana BOT AFRICA
Caprivi Strip CPV
Eswatini SWZ
Ethiopia ETH
Kenya KEN
KwaZulu-Natal NAT
Madagascar MDG
Malawi MLW
Mozambique MOZ
Namibia NAM
Northern Provinces TVL
Tanzania TAN
Uganda UGA
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 69 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 7.5 °C 11.6 °C 15.0 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 28.1 °C 30.6 °C 33.0 °C
Annual rainfall 463 mm 646 mm 842 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 7 mm 24 mm 61 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 69 research-grade observations of Coleus lasianthus 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 8 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.

  • Coleus decumbens Gürke
  • Coleus menyharthii Briq.
  • Coleus tetensis Baker
  • Coleus vagatus E.A.Bruce
  • Plectranthus erubescens Hedge
  • Plectranthus lasianthus (Gürke) Vollesen
  • Plectranthus tetensis (Baker) Agnew
  • Plectranthus vagatus (E.A.Bruce) Codd

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.