Eulophia maculata(Lindl.) Rchb.f.

monk orchid

WFO wfo-0000960055 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Eulophia maculata, photographed by Josiah Londerée
fig. a Josiah Londerée, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-17 / obs. 198449576

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 31 botanical countries

Regions where Eulophia maculata is native: Angola, Benin, Burkina, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Comoros, Congo, DR Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Gulf of Guinea Is., Ivory Coast, Kenya, KwaZulu-Natal, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Nigeria, Réunion, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Sudan-South Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zimbabwe AngolaBeninBurkinaBurundiCameroonCentral African RepublicCongoDR CongoGabonGhanaGuineaGuinea-BissauGulf of Guinea Is.Ivory CoastKenyaKwaZulu-NatalLiberiaMadagascarMalawiMozambiqueNigeriaSenegalSierra LeoneSudan-South SudanTanzaniaTogoUgandaZimbabwe ComorosMauritiusRéunion
Native distribution of Eulophia maculata, 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
Angola ANG AFRICA
Benin BEN
Burkina BKN
Burundi BUR
Cameroon CMN
Central African Republic CAF
Comoros COM
Congo CON
DR Congo ZAI
Gabon GAB
Ghana GHA
Guinea GUI
Guinea-Bissau GNB
Gulf of Guinea Is. GGI
Ivory Coast IVO
Kenya KEN
KwaZulu-Natal NAT
Liberia LBR
Madagascar MDG
Malawi MLW
Mauritius MAU
Mozambique MOZ
Nigeria NGA
Réunion REU
Senegal SEN
Sierra Leone SIE
Sudan-South Sudan SUD
Tanzania TAN
Togo TOG
Uganda UGA
Zimbabwe ZIM

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 524 in flower of 1,175 examined

Proportion of examined Eulophia maculata in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 19 135 14% 9% to 21%
Feb 24 85 28% 20% to 39%
Mar 27 117 23% 16% to 31%
Apr 20 52 38% 26% to 52%
May 16 40 40% 26% to 55%
Jun 5 29 17% 8% to 35%
Jul 7 30 23% 12% to 41%
Aug 47 66 71% 59% to 81%
Sep 105 130 81% 73% to 87%
Oct 131 175 75% 68% to 81%
Nov 92 169 54% 47% to 62%
Dec 31 147 21% 15% to 28%

Peak flowering in Sep. Each bar is the share of Eulophia maculata 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. 524 of 1,175 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 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 2,000 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 10.8 °C 17.0 °C 23.6 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 27.0 °C 30.3 °C 33.4 °C
Annual rainfall 1,116 mm 1,479 mm 2,575 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 25 mm 160 mm 293 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 2,000 research-grade observations of Eulophia maculata 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 23 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.

  • Aerobion maculatm (Lindl.) Spreng.
  • Angraecum maculatum Lindl.
  • Angraecum monophyllum A.Rich.
  • Epidendrum connivens Vell.
  • Eulophia ledienii Stein ex N.E.Br.
  • Eulophia liedenii N.E.Br.
  • Eulophia mackenii Rolfe ex Hemsl.
  • Eulophia monophylla (A.Rich.) S.Moore
  • Eulophidium liedenii (N.E.Br.) De Wild.
  • Eulophidium mackenii (Rolfe ex Hemsl.) Schltr.
  • Eulophidium maculatum (Lindl.) Pfitzer
  • Eulophidium maculatum var. pterocarpum Hauman
  • Eulophidium monophyllum (A.Rich.) Schltr.
  • Eulophidium nyassanum Schltr.
  • Eulophidium warneckeanum Kraenzl.
  • Geodorum pictum Link
  • Graphorkis maculata (Lindl.) Kuntze
  • Limodorum maculatum (Lindl.) G.Lodd.
  • Oeceoclades mackenii (Rolfe ex Hemsl.) Garay & P.Taylor
  • Oeceoclades maculata (Lindl.) Lindl.
  • Oeceoclades maculata var. pterocarpa (Hauman) Garay & P.Taylor
  • Oeceoclades monophylla (A.Rich.) Garay & P.Taylor
  • Oeceoclades paraguayensis Hauman

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. USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol OEMA2. public domain. 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.