Cordia dentataPoir.

WFO wfo-0000620413 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Cordia dentata, photographed by Daniel Pineda Vera
fig. a Daniel Pineda Vera, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-07-07 / obs. 142001812
Cordia dentata, photographed by Daniel Cahen
fig. b Daniel Cahen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 61035577
Cordia dentata, photographed by Álvaro Rivas Godin
fig. c Álvaro Rivas Godin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 64222173
Cordia dentata, photographed by Daniel Pineda Vera
fig. d Daniel Pineda Vera, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 22432085
Cordia dentata, photographed by Tereso Hernández Morales
fig. e Tereso Hernández Morales, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 18361701
Cordia dentata, photographed by johnyochum
fig. f johnyochum, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 17315242
Cordia dentata, photographed by naturalistas_sr
fig. g naturalistas_sr, CC0 1.0 / obs. 3632959
Cordia dentata, photographed by Alexis López Hernández
fig. h Alexis López Hernández, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 75237661

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 27 botanical countries

Regions where Cordia dentata is native: Mexico Central, Mexico Gulf, Mexico Northeast, Mexico Northwest, Mexico Southeast, Mexico Southwest, Aruba, Belize, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Leeward Is., Netherlands Antilles, Nicaragua, Panamá, Trinidad-Tobago, Venezuela, Venezuelan Antilles, Windward Is. Mexico CentralMexico GulfMexico NortheastMexico NorthwestMexico SoutheastMexico SouthwestBelizeBoliviaColombiaCosta RicaCubaDominican RepublicEl SalvadorFrench GuianaGuatemalaHaitiHondurasJamaicaNicaraguaPanamáTrinidad-TobagoVenezuela ArubaLeeward Is.Netherlands AntillesVenezuelan AntillesWindward Is.
Native distribution of Cordia dentata, 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. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Aruba ARU SOUTHERN AMERICA
Belize BLZ
Bolivia BOL
Colombia CLM
Costa Rica COS
Cuba CUB
Dominican Republic DOM
El Salvador ELS
French Guiana FRG
Guatemala GUA
Haiti HAI
Honduras HON
Jamaica JAM
Leeward Is. LEE
Netherlands Antilles NLA
Nicaragua NIC
Panamá PAN
Trinidad-Tobago TRT
Venezuela VEN
Venezuelan Antilles VNA
Windward Is. WIN
Mexico Central MXC NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Gulf MXG
Mexico Northeast MXE
Mexico Northwest MXN
Mexico Southeast MXT
Mexico Southwest MXS

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.

Flowering 93 in flower of 163 examined

Peak flowering in Mar. Each bar is the share of Cordia dentata observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 93 of 163 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Where it actually grows measured, from 657 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 14.8 °C 23.2 °C 25.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 28.0 °C 30.2 °C 34.5 °C
Annual rainfall 629 mm 1,129 mm 1,752 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 8 mm 25 mm 181 mm

It is not found anywhere that gets close to freezing. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 657 research-grade observations of Cordia dentata 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. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 9 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.

  • Carpiphea dentata Raf.
  • Cordia calyptrata Bert. ex Spreng.
  • Cordia corylifolia Willd. ex Roem. & Schult.
  • Cordia leptopoda K.Krause
  • Cordia tenuifolia Bertol.
  • Lithocardium tenuifolium (Bertol.) Kuntze
  • Varronia calyptrata (Bertero ex Spreng.) A.DC.
  • Varronia calyptrata DC.
  • Varronia calyptrata var. hartwegii DC.

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.