Crossopetalum rhacomaCrantz

maidenberry

WFO wfo-0000626468 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Crossopetalum rhacoma, photographed by Alison Northup
fig. a Alison Northup, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-11-17 / obs. 169330157
Crossopetalum rhacoma, photographed by Daniel Cahen
fig. b Daniel Cahen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 61102750
Crossopetalum rhacoma, photographed by Daniel Cahen
fig. c Daniel Cahen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 61093309
Crossopetalum rhacoma, photographed by Eric Knight
fig. d Eric Knight, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 4457406
Crossopetalum rhacoma, photographed by Eric Knight
fig. e Eric Knight, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 2558373
Crossopetalum rhacoma, photographed by Alison Copeland
fig. f Alison Copeland, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 148544870
Crossopetalum rhacoma, photographed by Alison Northup
fig. g Alison Northup, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 169415059
Crossopetalum rhacoma, photographed by Scott Ward
fig. h Scott Ward, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 166308780

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
01052898
Filed as
Crossopetalum rhacoma Crantz
Det. by
A. H. Liogier 1983-01-01
Collected
A. H. Liogier 1983-04-07
Origin
PR
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 19 botanical countries

Regions where Crossopetalum rhacoma is native: Florida, Mexico Gulf, Mexico Southeast, Aruba, Bahamas, Bermuda, Cayman Is., Colombia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Leeward Is., Netherlands Antilles, Panamá, Puerto Rico, Turks-Caicos Is., Venezuelan Antilles, Windward Is. FloridaMexico GulfMexico SoutheastColombiaCubaDominican RepublicHaitiJamaicaPanamáPuerto Rico ArubaBahamasBermudaCayman Is.Leeward Is.Netherlands AntillesTurks-Caicos Is.Venezuelan AntillesWindward Is.
Native distribution of Crossopetalum rhacoma, 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
Bahamas BAH
Bermuda BER
Cayman Is. CAY
Colombia CLM
Cuba CUB
Dominican Republic DOM
Haiti HAI
Jamaica JAM
Leeward Is. LEE
Netherlands Antilles NLA
Panamá PAN
Puerto Rico PUE
Turks-Caicos Is. TCI
Venezuelan Antilles VNA
Windward Is. WIN
Florida FLA NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Gulf MXG
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 265 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 17.6 °C 22.0 °C 24.9 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 27.8 °C 29.0 °C 30.3 °C
Annual rainfall 662 mm 1,231 mm 2,166 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 66 mm 152 mm 349 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 265 research-grade observations of Crossopetalum rhacoma 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.

  • Crossopetalum pallens (Sm.) Kuntze
  • Crossopetalum rotundatum (Lam.) Kuntze
  • Myginda crossopetalum (L.) Raeusch.
  • Myginda pallens Sm.
  • Myginda rhacoma Sw.
  • Myginda rotundata Lam.
  • Rhacoma crossopetalum L.
  • Rhacoma crossopetalum f. longifolia Urb.
  • Rhacoma crossopetalum f. rotundata Urb.
  • Rhacoma crossopetalum f. typica Urb.
  • Rhacoma pallens (Sm.) M.Gómez

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.