Dianthera secunda(Lam.) Griseb.

WFO wfo-0000642975 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Dianthera secunda, photographed by Don Loarie
fig. a Don Loarie, CC BY 4.0 / 2020-01-01 / obs. 58880027
Dianthera secunda, photographed by Aitor
fig. b Aitor, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 57772682
Dianthera secunda, photographed by Ricardo Lima
fig. c Ricardo Lima, CC0 1.0 / obs. 170910915
Dianthera secunda, photographed by Eric Knight
fig. d Eric Knight, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 904963
Dianthera secunda, photographed by Todd Boland
fig. e Todd Boland, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 113809335
Dianthera secunda, photographed by desertnaturalist
fig. f desertnaturalist, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 27240210
Dianthera secunda, photographed by Skjold Søndergaard
fig. g Skjold Søndergaard, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 171435168
Dianthera secunda, photographed by geralg
fig. h geralg, CC0 1.0 / obs. 109816777

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
00205732
Filed as
Justicia secunda Vahl
Det. by
F. Jiménez Rodríguez 2007-01-01
Collected
I. Vandebroek 2006-05-20
Origin
DO
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 12 botanical countries

Regions where Dianthera secunda is native: Brazil North, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Leeward Is., Panamá, Suriname, Trinidad-Tobago, Venezuela, Venezuelan Antilles, Windward Is. Brazil NorthColombiaEcuadorFrench GuianaGuyanaPanamáSurinameTrinidad-TobagoVenezuela Leeward Is.Venezuelan AntillesWindward Is.
Native distribution of Dianthera secunda, 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
Brazil North BZN SOUTHERN AMERICA
Colombia CLM
Ecuador ECU
French Guiana FRG
Guyana GUY
Leeward Is. LEE
Panamá PAN
Suriname SUR
Trinidad-Tobago TRT
Venezuela VEN
Venezuelan Antilles VNA
Windward Is. WIN

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 256 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 11.3 °C 21.5 °C 24.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 21.8 °C 28.0 °C 33.1 °C
Annual rainfall 1,014 mm 2,147 mm 4,036 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 36 mm 209 mm 523 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 256 research-grade observations of Dianthera secunda 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 28 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.

  • Amphiscopia ciliata Moric. ex Nees
  • Amphiscopia moricandiana Nees
  • Dianthera lucida (Andrews) Benth. & Hook.f. ex B.D.Jacks.
  • Dianthera secunda var. geniculata (Sims) Griseb.
  • Dianthera secunda var. holtonii Hochr.
  • Dianthera secunda var. lucida (Andrews) Griseb.
  • Ecbolium geniculatum (Sims) Kuntze
  • Ecbolium lucidum (Andrews) Kuntze
  • Ecbolium moricandianum (Nees) Kuntze
  • Ecbolium orthotactus Kuntze
  • Ecbolium secundum (Lam.) Kuntze
  • Justicia caracasana Willd. ex Nees
  • Justicia caripensis Kunth
  • Justicia coccinea Forsyth ex Nees
  • Justicia geniculata Sims
  • Justicia lucida Andrews
  • Justicia moricandiana (Nees) Lemée
  • Justicia secunda Vahl
  • Justicia secunda var. leucantha Leonard
  • Lustrinia geniculata Raf.
  • Rhacodiscus lucidus (Andrews) Lindau
  • Rhacodiscus moricandianus (Nees) Bremek.
  • Rhacodiscus secundus (Lam.) Bremek.
  • Rhytiglossa geniculata Nees

and 4 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.