Crinum ornatum(L.f.) Herb.

WFO wfo-0000764624 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 5 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 5 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.

Crinum ornatum, photographed by Mattia Menchetti
fig. a Mattia Menchetti, CC BY 4.0 / 2018-09-07 / obs. 24490094

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
04736570
Filed as
Crinum ornatum (Aiton) Herb.
Det. by
not recorded on this sheet
Collected
J. E. Madsen 1996-09-20
Origin
BF
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 30 botanical countries

Regions where Crinum ornatum is native: Benin, Burkina, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, DR Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Mali, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan-South Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda BeninBurkinaBurundiCameroonCentral African RepublicChadCongoDR CongoEquatorial GuineaEritreaEthiopiaGabonGambiaGhanaGuineaGuinea-BissauIvory CoastKenyaMaliNamibiaNigerNigeriaRwandaSenegalSierra LeoneSomaliaSudan-South SudanTanzaniaTogoUganda
Native distribution of Crinum ornatum, 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
Benin BEN AFRICA
Burkina BKN
Burundi BUR
Cameroon CMN
Central African Republic CAF
Chad CHA
Congo CON
DR Congo ZAI
Equatorial Guinea EQG
Eritrea ERI
Ethiopia ETH
Gabon GAB
Gambia GAM
Ghana GHA
Guinea GUI
Guinea-Bissau GNB
Ivory Coast IVO
Kenya KEN
Mali MLI
Namibia NAM
Niger NGR
Nigeria NGA
Rwanda RWA
Senegal SEN
Sierra Leone SIE
Somalia SOM
Sudan-South Sudan SUD
Tanzania TAN
Togo TOG
Uganda UGA

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 87 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 13.5 °C 18.9 °C 23.3 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 29.2 °C 36.2 °C 39.3 °C
Annual rainfall 455 mm 1,192 mm 2,776 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 0 mm 6 mm 221 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 87 research-grade observations of Crinum ornatum 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 36 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.

  • Amaryllis broussonetii Redouté
  • Amaryllis disticha Sims
  • Amaryllis latifolia L'Hér.
  • Amaryllis lineata Lam.
  • Amaryllis liturata Rchb.
  • Amaryllis longa hort. ex Schult.f.
  • Amaryllis ornata L.f.
  • Amaryllis ornata Ker Gawl.
  • Amaryllis spectabilis Andrews
  • Amaryllis yuccaeoides J.Thomps.
  • Brunsvigia massaiana L.Linden & Rodigas
  • Crinum boehmii Baker
  • Crinum broussonetianum Herb.
  • Crinum broussonetianum var. pluriflorum Herb.
  • Crinum broussonetii (Redouté) Herb.
  • Crinum distichum Herb.
  • Crinum herbertianum Wall.
  • Crinum linnaei M.Roem.
  • Crinum lituratum (Rchb.) Ravenna
  • Crinum massaianum (Linden & Rodigas) N.E.Br.
  • Crinum rueppelianum Fresen.
  • Crinum sanderianum Baker
  • Crinum scaberrimum Herb.
  • Crinum scabrum Herb.

and 12 more.

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.