Euploca fruticosa(L.) J.I.M.Melo & Semir

Key West heliotrope

WFO wfo-0000743883 Accepted WFO 2026-06 6 photographs CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–f · 2 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 2 times, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Euploca fruticosa, photographed by Oscar C. González Martínez
fig. a Oscar C. González Martínez, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2021-08-21 / obs. 152353057

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
Smithsonian, US National Herbarium
Accession
US 1555190
Filed as
Euploca fruticosa (L.) J.I.M.Melo & Semir
Det. by
Feuillet, C.
Collected
E. L. Ekman 1930-09-25
Origin
DO
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC0 1.0)

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 25 botanical countries

Regions where Euploca fruticosa is native: Arizona, Florida, Mexico Central, Mexico Gulf, Mexico Northeast, Mexico Northwest, Mexico Southeast, Mexico Southwest, Texas, Aruba, Belize, Brazil Northeast, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Netherlands Antilles, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, Trinidad-Tobago, Venezuela ArizonaFloridaMexico CentralMexico GulfMexico NortheastMexico NorthwestMexico SoutheastMexico SouthwestTexasBelizeBrazil NortheastColombiaCosta RicaCubaDominican RepublicGuatemalaHaitiHondurasJamaicaNicaraguaPuerto RicoTrinidad-TobagoVenezuela ArubaNetherlands Antilles
Native distribution of Euploca 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. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Aruba ARU SOUTHERN AMERICA
Belize BLZ
Brazil Northeast BZE
Colombia CLM
Costa Rica COS
Cuba CUB
Dominican Republic DOM
Guatemala GUA
Haiti HAI
Honduras HON
Jamaica JAM
Netherlands Antilles NLA
Nicaragua NIC
Puerto Rico PUE
Trinidad-Tobago TRT
Venezuela VEN
Arizona ARI NORTHERN AMERICA
Florida FLA
Mexico Central MXC
Mexico Gulf MXG
Mexico Northeast MXE
Mexico Northwest MXN
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.

Also published as 9 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.

  • Heliotropium assurgens I.M.Johnst.
  • Heliotropium campechianum Lehm.
  • Heliotropium campechianum Kunth
  • Heliotropium fruticosum L.
  • Heliotropium humile Lam.
  • Heliotropium myosotoides Chapm.
  • Heliotropium phyllostachyum Torr.
  • Heliotropium phyllostachyum var. erectum J.F.Macbr.
  • Schleidenia dasycarpa Fresen.

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 HEFR2. 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.