Costus villosissimusJacq.

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WFO wfo-0000363721 Accepted WFO 2026-06 6 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–f · 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.

Costus villosissimus, photographed by Aitor
fig. a Aitor, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-06-25 / obs. 139392528
Costus villosissimus, photographed by Anthony Batista
fig. b Anthony Batista, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203195143
Costus villosissimus, photographed by Line Juul Nielsen
fig. c Line Juul Nielsen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 171018875
Costus villosissimus, photographed by Anthony Batista
fig. d Anthony Batista, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203195172
Costus villosissimus, photographed by Line Juul Nielsen
fig. e Line Juul Nielsen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 171018894
Costus villosissimus, photographed by Line Juul Nielsen
fig. f Line Juul Nielsen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 171018909

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
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
03599543
Filed as
Costus villosissimus Jacq.
Det. by
M. S. Jaimes-Roncancio 2016-08-01
Collected
D. Cárdenas-López 2016-03-09
Origin
CO
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 14 botanical countries

Regions where Costus villosissimus is native: Mexico Gulf, Mexico Northeast, Mexico Southeast, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panamá, Venezuela, Windward Is. Mexico GulfMexico NortheastMexico SoutheastColombiaCosta RicaEcuadorFrench GuianaGuyanaHondurasJamaicaNicaraguaPanamáVenezuela Windward Is.
Native distribution of Costus villosissimus, 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
Colombia CLM SOUTHERN AMERICA
Costa Rica COS
Ecuador ECU
French Guiana FRG
Guyana GUY
Honduras HON
Jamaica JAM
Nicaragua NIC
Panamá PAN
Venezuela VEN
Windward Is. WIN
Mexico Gulf MXG NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Northeast MXE
Mexico Southeast MXT

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 18.4 °C 23.3 °C 24.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 25.7 °C 29.5 °C 31.3 °C
Annual rainfall 1,590 mm 2,723 mm 5,420 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 61 mm 107 mm 631 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 69 research-grade observations of Costus villosissimus 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 4 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.

  • Costus friedrichsenii Petersen
  • Costus hirsutus C.Presl
  • Costus septimus Roem. & Schult.
  • Costus villosus T.Jacks. ex J.Dix

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.