Cuphea calophyllaCham. & Schltdl.

WFO wfo-0000629875 Accepted WFO 2026-06 6 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–f · 4 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 4 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.

Cuphea calophylla, photographed by Giovanni Marques de Castro
fig. a Giovanni Marques de Castro, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2016-03-10 / obs. 3175128

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 17 botanical countries

Regions where Cuphea calophylla is native: Mexico Central, Mexico Southeast, Mexico Southwest, Argentina Northeast, Argentina Northwest, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil South, Brazil Southeast, Brazil West-Central, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panamá, Paraguay Mexico CentralMexico SoutheastMexico SouthwestArgentina NortheastArgentina NorthwestBelizeBoliviaBrazil SouthBrazil SoutheastBrazil West-CentralColombiaCosta RicaGuatemalaHondurasNicaraguaPanamáParaguay
Native distribution of Cuphea calophylla, 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
Argentina Northeast AGE SOUTHERN AMERICA
Argentina Northwest AGW
Belize BLZ
Bolivia BOL
Brazil South BZS
Brazil Southeast BZL
Brazil West-Central BZC
Colombia CLM
Costa Rica COS
Guatemala GUA
Honduras HON
Nicaragua NIC
Panamá PAN
Paraguay PAR
Mexico Central MXC NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Southeast MXT
Mexico Southwest MXS

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 30 in flower of 31 examined

Proportion of examined Cuphea calophylla in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 1 1 too few examined
Feb 2 2 too few examined
Mar 2 2 too few examined
Apr 4 4 too few examined
May 3 3 too few examined
Jun 2 2 too few examined
Jul 1 1 too few examined
Aug 1 1 too few examined
Sep 3 3 too few examined
Oct 3 4 too few examined
Nov 3 3 too few examined
Dec 5 5 100% 57% to 100%

Peak flowering in Dec. Each bar is the share of Cuphea calophylla 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. 30 of 31 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 11 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. 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.

Also published as 19 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.

  • Cuphea anisophylla Hemsl.
  • Cuphea antisyphilitica Seem.
  • Cuphea calophylla f. breuningii Koehne
  • Cuphea calophylla f. deformis Koehne
  • Cuphea calophylla f. plumbaginea (Mart.) Koehne
  • Cuphea calophylla subsp. calophylla
  • Cuphea calophylla subsp. mesostemon (Koehne) Lourteig
  • Cuphea calophylla var. microstyla (Koehne) Koehne
  • Cuphea calophylla var. orthodisca (Koehne) Koehne
  • Cuphea fuscinervis Koehne
  • Cuphea mesostemon Koehne
  • Cuphea mesostemon f. ovalifolia Chodat
  • Cuphea mesostemon var. missionera Lourteig
  • Cuphea mesostemum var. missionera Lourteig
  • Cuphea microstyla Koehne
  • Cuphea orthodisca Koehne
  • Cuphea ovalifolia (Chodat) Koehne
  • Cuphea plumbaginea Mart.
  • Parsonsia calophylla (Cham. & Schltdl.) Standl.

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.