Combretum hereroenseSchinz

russet bushwillow

WFO wfo-0000616365 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Combretum hereroense, photographed by Matthew Fainman
fig. a Matthew Fainman, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-04-02 / obs. 189098357

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
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Accession
K000489077
Filed as
Combretum hereroense Schinz
Det. by
Exell, A.W.
Collected
Harbor, C.C. 1914-01-01
Origin
BW
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 17 botanical countries

Regions where Combretum hereroense is native: Angola, Botswana, Caprivi Strip, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Kenya, KwaZulu-Natal, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Northern Provinces, Somalia, Sudan-South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe AngolaBotswanaCaprivi StripEswatiniEthiopiaKenyaKwaZulu-NatalMalawiMozambiqueNamibiaNorthern ProvincesSomaliaSudan-South SudanTanzaniaUgandaZambiaZimbabwe
Native distribution of Combretum hereroense, 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
Botswana BOT
Caprivi Strip CPV
Eswatini SWZ
Ethiopia ETH
Kenya KEN
KwaZulu-Natal NAT
Malawi MLW
Mozambique MOZ
Namibia NAM
Northern Provinces TVL
Somalia SOM
Sudan-South Sudan SUD
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 528 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 5.4 °C 10.0 °C 12.6 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 27.8 °C 30.4 °C 34.0 °C
Annual rainfall 414 mm 582 mm 831 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 2 mm 18 mm 34 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 528 research-grade observations of Combretum hereroense 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.

  • Combretum borumense Engl. & Diels
  • Combretum bruchhausenianum Engl. & Diels
  • Combretum cufodontii Chiov.
  • Combretum eilkerianum Schinz
  • Combretum erlangerianum Engl. ex Diels
  • Combretum greenwayi Exell
  • Combretum grotei Exell
  • Combretum hereroense var. villosissimum Engl. & Diels
  • Combretum hereroense var. volkensii (Engl.) Wickens
  • Combretum parvifolium Engl.
  • Combretum porphyrolepis Engl. & Diels
  • Combretum rautanenii Engl. & Diels
  • Combretum rhodesicum Baker f.
  • Combretum sambesiacum Engl. & Diels
  • Combretum transvaalense Schinz
  • Combretum transvaalense var. bolusii Dümmer
  • Combretum transvaalense var. ochrolepidotum Dümmer
  • Combretum transvaalense var. villosissimum (Engl. & Diels) Burtt Davy
  • Combretum usaramense Engl.
  • Combretum villosissimum (Engl. & Diels) Engl.
  • Combretum volkensii Engl.

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. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. 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.