Crotalaria montanaRoxb. ex Roth

WFO wfo-0000199921 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 2 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 2 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.

Crotalaria montana, photographed by elawrey
fig. a elawrey, CC BY 4.0 / 2020-05-09 / obs. 75148619
Crotalaria montana, photographed by elawrey
fig. b elawrey, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 66242997
Crotalaria montana, photographed by elawrey
fig. c elawrey, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 75148609
Crotalaria montana, photographed by elawrey
fig. d elawrey, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 66242936
Crotalaria montana, photographed by elawrey
fig. e elawrey, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 75148714
Crotalaria montana, photographed by elawrey
fig. f elawrey, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 66243010
Crotalaria montana, photographed by elawrey
fig. g elawrey, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 75148648
Crotalaria montana, photographed by elawrey
fig. h elawrey, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 66243064

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 18 botanical countries

Regions where Crotalaria montana is native: Nansei-shoto, Taiwan, Andaman Is., Assam, Cambodia, East Himalaya, India, Laos, Myanmar, New Guinea, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam, New South Wales, Northern Territory, Queensland, Western Australia TaiwanAssamCambodiaEast HimalayaIndiaLaosMyanmarNew GuineaPhilippinesSri LankaThailandVietnamNew South WalesNorthern TerritoryQueenslandWestern Australia Nansei-shotoAndaman Is.
Native distribution of Crotalaria montana, 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
Andaman Is. AND ASIA-TROPICAL
Assam ASS
Cambodia CBD
East Himalaya EHM
India IND
Laos LAO
Myanmar MYA
New Guinea NWG
Philippines PHI
Sri Lanka SRL
Thailand THA
Vietnam VIE
New South Wales NSW AUSTRALASIA
Northern Territory NTA
Queensland QLD
Western Australia WAU
Nansei-shoto NNS ASIA-TEMPERATE
Taiwan TAI

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 54 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 8.5 °C 10.8 °C 20.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 27.9 °C 30.3 °C 36.8 °C
Annual rainfall 784 mm 1,097 mm 1,795 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 5 mm 100 mm 141 mm

It is barely found anywhere that freezes. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 54 research-grade observations of Crotalaria montana 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 7 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.

  • Crotalaria exserta Domin
  • Crotalaria formosana Matsum.
  • Crotalaria lamelliformis Sivaram., Yugandhar & L.J.Singh
  • Crotalaria linifolia f. perangusta Domin
  • Crotalaria linifolia var. angustifolia Gagnep.
  • Crotalaria montana var. angustifolia (Gagnep.) Niyomdham
  • Crotalaria naikiana Zate

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.