Crassocephalum crepidioidesS.Moore

redflower ragleaf

WFO wfo-0000133716 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Crassocephalum crepidioides, photographed by Greg Tasney
fig. a Greg Tasney, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-06-13 / obs. 205979153

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 26 botanical countries

Regions where Crassocephalum crepidioides is native: Angola, Benin, Cameroon, Cape Provinces, Central African Republic, Congo, DR Congo, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Gulf of Guinea Is., Ivory Coast, KwaZulu-Natal, Liberia, Madagascar, Mozambique, Nigeria, Northern Provinces, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Sudan-South Sudan, Togo, Zambia, Zimbabwe AngolaBeninCameroonCape ProvincesCentral African RepublicCongoDR CongoEswatiniEthiopiaGabonGhanaGuineaGulf of Guinea Is.Ivory CoastKwaZulu-NatalLiberiaMadagascarMozambiqueNigeriaNorthern ProvincesSenegalSierra LeoneSudan-South SudanTogoZambiaZimbabwe
Native distribution of Crassocephalum crepidioides, 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
Benin BEN
Cameroon CMN
Cape Provinces CPP
Central African Republic CAF
Congo CON
DR Congo ZAI
Eswatini SWZ
Ethiopia ETH
Gabon GAB
Ghana GHA
Guinea GUI
Gulf of Guinea Is. GGI
Ivory Coast IVO
KwaZulu-Natal NAT
Liberia LBR
Madagascar MDG
Mozambique MOZ
Nigeria NGA
Northern Provinces TVL
Senegal SEN
Sierra Leone SIE
Sudan-South Sudan SUD
Togo TOG
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.

Flowering 599 in flower of 715 examined

Proportion of examined Crassocephalum crepidioides in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 55 71 77% 66% to 86%
Feb 46 54 85% 73% to 92%
Mar 50 58 86% 75% to 93%
Apr 85 110 77% 69% to 84%
May 73 80 91% 83% to 96%
Jun 66 85 78% 68% to 85%
Jul 45 58 78% 65% to 86%
Aug 42 48 88% 75% to 94%
Sep 38 40 95% 84% to 99%
Oct 48 53 91% 80% to 96%
Nov 28 32 88% 72% to 95%
Dec 23 26 88% 71% to 96%

Peak flowering in Sep. Each bar is the share of Crassocephalum crepidioides 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. 599 of 715 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 2,003 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 1.8 °C 11.4 °C 20.0 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 22.4 °C 28.3 °C 32.0 °C
Annual rainfall 921 mm 2,490 mm 4,577 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 44 mm 176 mm 729 mm

It is found where winters are cool but frost is light or absent. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 2,003 research-grade observations of Crassocephalum crepidioides 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 10 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.

  • Crassocephalum crepidioides f. crepidioides
  • Crassocephalum crepidioides var. crepidioides
  • Crassocephalum crepidioides var. luteum Steen.
  • Crassocephalum diversifolium Hiern
  • Gynura crepidioides Benth.
  • Gynura crepidioides var. crepidioides
  • Gynura diversifolia Sch.Bip. ex Asch.
  • Gynura microcephala Vatke
  • Gynura polycephala Benth.
  • Senecio diversifolius A.Rich.

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.