Combretum mossambicense(Klotzsch) Engl.

WFO wfo-0000616560 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Combretum mossambicense, photographed by Noeleen du Toit
fig. a Noeleen du Toit, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2021-10-25 / obs. 165798047
Combretum mossambicense, photographed by Noeleen du Toit
fig. b Noeleen du Toit, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 163251036
Combretum mossambicense, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. c Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 139604822
Combretum mossambicense, photographed by Robert Taylor
fig. d Robert Taylor, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 126835215
Combretum mossambicense, photographed by Ryan van Huyssteen
fig. e Ryan van Huyssteen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 90057178
Combretum mossambicense, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. f Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 15961860
Combretum mossambicense, photographed by Robert Taylor
fig. g Robert Taylor, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 15696386
Combretum mossambicense, photographed by Alan Manson
fig. h Alan Manson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 55161195

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
K000489122
Filed as
Combretum mossambicense (Klotzsch) Engl.
Det. by
Exell, A.W.
Collected
Lugard, E.J. 1897-08-02
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 13 botanical countries

Regions where Combretum mossambicense is native: Angola, Botswana, Caprivi Strip, DR Congo, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Northern Provinces, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe AngolaBotswanaCaprivi StripDR CongoKenyaMalawiMozambiqueNamibiaNorthern ProvincesTanzaniaUgandaZambiaZimbabwe
Native distribution of Combretum mossambicense, 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
DR Congo ZAI
Kenya KEN
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 263 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 8.8 °C 11.2 °C 15.2 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 30.2 °C 32.1 °C 34.4 °C
Annual rainfall 367 mm 536 mm 844 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 2 mm 16 mm 27 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 263 research-grade observations of Combretum mossambicense 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.

  • Combretum cataractarum Diels
  • Combretum detinens Dinter
  • Combretum ischnothyrsum Engl. & Diels
  • Combretum migeodii Exell
  • Combretum quangense Engl. & Diels
  • Combretum rigidifolium Welw. ex Hiern
  • Combretum trichopetalum Engl.
  • Combretum ukambense Engl.
  • Poivrea glutinosa Klotzsch
  • Poivrea mossambicensis Klotzsch
  • Poivrea senensis Klotzsch

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.