Dicliptera sexangularis(L.) Juss.

sixangle foldwing

WFO wfo-0000646036 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Dicliptera sexangularis, photographed by johnyochum
fig. a johnyochum, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-04-30 / obs. 193383860
Dicliptera sexangularis, photographed by Center for Urban Ecology
fig. b Center for Urban Ecology, CC0 1.0 / obs. 194434332
Dicliptera sexangularis, photographed by Center for Urban Ecology
fig. c Center for Urban Ecology, CC0 1.0 / obs. 186729995
Dicliptera sexangularis, photographed by Center for Urban Ecology
fig. d Center for Urban Ecology, CC0 1.0 / obs. 185362501
Dicliptera sexangularis, photographed by Center for Urban Ecology
fig. e Center for Urban Ecology, CC0 1.0 / obs. 184212756
Dicliptera sexangularis, photographed by Center for Urban Ecology
fig. f Center for Urban Ecology, CC0 1.0 / obs. 183424087
Dicliptera sexangularis, photographed by Center for Urban Ecology
fig. g Center for Urban Ecology, CC0 1.0 / obs. 182337686
Dicliptera sexangularis, photographed by Josiah Londerée
fig. h Josiah Londerée, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 181909931

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
40258
Filed as
Dicliptera sexangularis (L.) Juss.
Det. by
M. A. Vincent 2012-01-01
Collected
H. T. Beck 1992-03-01
Origin
US
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 30 botanical countries

Regions where Dicliptera sexangularis is native: Florida, Mexico Central, Mexico Gulf, Mexico Northeast, Mexico Southeast, Mexico Southwest, Texas, Bahamas, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil North, Brazil West-Central, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Leeward Is., Panamá, Puerto Rico, Suriname, Trinidad-Tobago, Turks-Caicos Is., Venezuela FloridaMexico CentralMexico GulfMexico NortheastMexico SoutheastMexico SouthwestTexasBelizeBoliviaBrazil NorthBrazil West-CentralColombiaCosta RicaCubaDominican RepublicEl SalvadorFrench GuianaGuatemalaGuyanaHaitiHondurasJamaicaPanamáPuerto RicoSurinameTrinidad-TobagoVenezuela BahamasLeeward Is.Turks-Caicos Is.
Native distribution of Dicliptera sexangularis, 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
Bahamas BAH SOUTHERN AMERICA
Belize BLZ
Bolivia BOL
Brazil North BZN
Brazil West-Central BZC
Colombia CLM
Costa Rica COS
Cuba CUB
Dominican Republic DOM
El Salvador ELS
French Guiana FRG
Guatemala GUA
Guyana GUY
Haiti HAI
Honduras HON
Jamaica JAM
Leeward Is. LEE
Panamá PAN
Puerto Rico PUE
Suriname SUR
Trinidad-Tobago TRT
Turks-Caicos Is. TCI
Venezuela VEN
Florida FLA NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Central MXC
Mexico Gulf MXG
Mexico Northeast MXE
Mexico Southeast MXT
Mexico Southwest MXS
Texas TEX

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 182 in flower of 193 examined

Peak flowering in Nov. Each bar is the share of Dicliptera sexangularis 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. 182 of 193 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 6 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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 612 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 12.3 °C 14.6 °C 20.8 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 28.5 °C 31.3 °C 36.0 °C
Annual rainfall 566 mm 1,100 mm 1,539 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 55 mm 126 mm 192 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 612 research-grade observations of Dicliptera sexangularis 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. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 25 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.

  • Dactylostegium assurgens (L.) Bremek.
  • Dactylostegium portoricense (Spreng. ex Schult.) Nees
  • Dianthera angularis Salisb.
  • Dianthera sexangularis (L.) Sessé & Moc.
  • Diapedium assurgens (L.) Kuntze
  • Diapedium sexangulare (L.) Kuntze
  • Dicliptera assurgens (L.) Juss.
  • Dicliptera assurgens var. conferta Nees
  • Dicliptera assurgens var. vahliana (Nees) M.Gómez
  • Dicliptera mollis Nees
  • Dicliptera portoricensis Spreng.
  • Dicliptera portoricensis Spreng. ex Schult.
  • Dicliptera vahliana Nees
  • Justicia annua Steud.
  • Justicia assurgens L.
  • Justicia eustachiana Vahl
  • Justicia ladanoides DC. ex Nees
  • Justicia leptospermifolia DC. ex Nees
  • Justicia purpurea Poit. ex Nees
  • Justicia scandens Michx. ex Nees
  • Justicia sexangularis Gueldenst. ex Nees
  • Justicia sexangularis Nees
  • Justicia sexangularis L.
  • Solenochasma assurgens (L.) Fenzl

and 1 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. 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.