Cuphea fruticosa

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Cuphea fruticosa, photographed by Leonel Roget — fig. b Leonel Roget, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 182621981

Cuphea fruticosa, photographed by Romi Galeota Lencina — fig. c Romi Galeota Lencina, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 178488252

Cuphea fruticosa, photographed by Candela Castro — fig. d Candela Castro, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 170621953

Cuphea fruticosa, photographed by Gustavo Puente — fig. e Gustavo Puente, CC0 1.0 / obs. 159828177

Cuphea fruticosa, photographed by Malena Lorente — fig. f Malena Lorente, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 149246931

Cuphea fruticosa, photographed by Andrea Gantzer — fig. g Andrea Gantzer, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 137516232

Cuphea fruticosa, photographed by Gonzalo Roget — fig. h Gonzalo Roget, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 118863159

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 8 botanical countries

Native distribution of Cuphea fruticosa, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Argentina Northeast	AGE	SOUTHERN AMERICA
Brazil North	BZN
Brazil Northeast	BZE
Brazil South	BZS
Brazil Southeast	BZL
Brazil West-Central	BZC
Paraguay	PAR
Uruguay	URU

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 41 in flower of 41 examined

100%

Proportion of examined Cuphea fruticosa in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	6	6	100%	61% to 100%
Feb	4	4	too few examined
Mar	4	4	too few examined
Apr	3	3	too few examined
May	5	5	100%	57% to 100%
Jun	2	2	too few examined
Jul	1	1	too few examined
Aug	3	3	too few examined
Sep	3	3	too few examined
Oct	4	4	too few examined
Nov	4	4	too few examined
Dec	2	2	too few examined

Peak flowering in Jan. Each bar is the share of Cuphea fruticosa 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. 41 of 41 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 10 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 bonariensis Gillies ex Hook. & Arn.
Cuphea commersoniana (A.St.-Hil.) Koehne
Cuphea fruticosa subsp. hilaireana (Koehne) Koehne
Cuphea fruticosa var. chamaedendrum (A.St.-Hil.) Koehne
Cuphea fruticosa var. epilobioides (A.St.-Hil.) Koehne
Cuphea fruticosa var. megapotamica (Spreng.) Koehne
Cuphea fruticosa var. rosmarinifolia (A.St.-Hil.) Koehne
Cuphea fruticosa var. silenoides (A.St.-Hil.) Koehne
Cuphea glabra Gillies ex Hook. & Arn.
Cuphea ligustrina Cham. & Schltdl.
Cuphea ligustrina subsp. hilaireana Koehne
Cuphea ligustrina var. chamaedendrum A.St.-Hil.
Cuphea ligustrina var. commersoniana A.St.-Hil.
Cuphea ligustrina var. epilobioides A.St.-Hil.
Cuphea ligustrina var. rosmarinifolia A.St.-Hil.
Cuphea ligustrina var. silenoides A.St.-Hil.
Cuphea ligustrina var. typica Koehne
Cuphea megapotamica Spreng.
Cuphea silenoides (A.St.-Hil.) Herter

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
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.