Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations
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 7 botanical countries
| Region | TDWG code | Continent |
|---|---|---|
| Argentina Northeast | AGE | SOUTHERN AMERICA |
| Argentina Northwest | AGW | |
| Bolivia | BOL | |
| Chile North | CLN | |
| Ecuador | ECU | |
| Peru | PER | |
| Uruguay | URU |
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 443 observations
| Condition | 5th percentile | Median | 95th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coldest month, mean daily low | -0.8 °C | 3.9 °C | 7.9 °C |
| Warmest month, mean daily high | 13.4 °C | 23.9 °C | 29.3 °C |
| Annual rainfall | 347 mm | 1,007 mm | 1,524 mm |
| Rainfall in the driest quarter | 18 mm | 39 mm | 209 mm |
It is found where winters bring light frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 443 research-grade observations of Colletia spinosissima 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 Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.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 21 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.
- Colletia assimilis N.E.Br.
- Colletia atrox Miers
- Colletia ferox Gillies & Hook.
- Colletia ferox var. infausta (N.E.Br.) Suess.
- Colletia ferox var. intricata (Miers) Reiche
- Colletia ferox var. invicta Reiche
- Colletia ferox var. puberula Speg.
- Colletia horrida Willd.
- Colletia infausta N.E.Br.
- Colletia infausta var. coarctata Reiche
- Colletia intricata Miers
- Colletia invicta Miers
- Colletia kunthiana Miers
- Colletia polyacantha Humb. & Bonpl. ex Roem. & Schult.
- Colletia spinosa Lam.
- Colletia spinosa var. assimilis (N.E.Br.) Suess.
- Colletia spinosa var. miersii Suess.
- Colletia spinosa var. trifurcata (N.E.Br.) Suess.
- Colletia tenuicola Miers
- Colletia trifurcata N.E.Br.
- Colletia weddelliana Miers
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.