Echites umbellatusJacq.

devil's potato

WFO wfo-0000947877 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Echites umbellatus, photographed by Brandon Corder
fig. a Brandon Corder, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-26 / obs. 200808771

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 13 botanical countries

Regions where Echites umbellatus is native: Florida, Mexico Southeast, Bahamas, Belize, Cayman Is., Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Leeward Is., Southwest Caribbean, Turks-Caicos Is. FloridaMexico SoutheastBelizeCubaDominican RepublicHaitiHondurasJamaicaSouthwest Caribbean BahamasCayman Is.Leeward Is.Turks-Caicos Is.
Native distribution of Echites umbellatus, 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
Cayman Is. CAY
Cuba CUB
Dominican Republic DOM
Haiti HAI
Honduras HON
Jamaica JAM
Leeward Is. LEE
Southwest Caribbean SWC
Turks-Caicos Is. TCI
Florida FLA NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Southeast MXT

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 74 in flower of 80 examined

Proportion of examined Echites umbellatus in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 4 5 80% 38% to 96%
Feb 0 2 too few examined
Mar 0 0 too few examined
Apr 1 1 too few examined
May 7 7 100% 65% to 100%
Jun 8 8 100% 68% to 100%
Jul 6 6 100% 61% to 100%
Aug 7 7 100% 65% to 100%
Sep 20 20 100% 84% to 100%
Oct 10 13 77% 50% to 92%
Nov 3 3 too few examined
Dec 8 8 100% 68% to 100%

Peak flowering in May. Each bar is the share of Echites umbellatus 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. 74 of 80 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 4 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 15 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.

  • Apocynum obliquum Mill.
  • Cameraria echites (L.) L.
  • Echites crassipes A.Rich.
  • Echites echites Britton ex Small
  • Echites littoreus Kunth
  • Echites longiflorus (Griseb.) Miers
  • Echites obliquus (Mill.) Miers
  • Echites ovatus Miers
  • Echites umbellata var. typica Woodson
  • Echites umbellatus subsp. crassipes (A.Rich.) Borhidi & O.Muñiz
  • Echites umbellatus var. crassipes (A.Rich.) M.Gómez
  • Echites umbellatus var. longiflorus Griseb.
  • Echites umbellatus var. umbellatus
  • Rhodocalyx crassipes (A.Rich.) Miers
  • Tabernaemontana echites L.

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.