Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations
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 11 botanical countries
| Region | TDWG code | Continent |
|---|---|---|
| Colombia | CLM | SOUTHERN AMERICA |
| Costa Rica | COS | |
| French Guiana | FRG | |
| Guyana | GUY | |
| Netherlands Antilles | NLA | |
| Panamá | PAN | |
| Suriname | SUR | |
| Trinidad-Tobago | TRT | |
| Venezuela | VEN | |
| Venezuelan Antilles | VNA | |
| Marquesas | MRQ | PACIFIC |
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 1,190 observations
| Condition | 5th percentile | Median | 95th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coldest month, mean daily low | 7.8 °C | 16.6 °C | 23.6 °C |
| Warmest month, mean daily high | 20.9 °C | 26.5 °C | 31.1 °C |
| Annual rainfall | 332 mm | 1,325 mm | 3,245 mm |
| Rainfall in the driest quarter | 5 mm | 150 mm | 436 mm |
It is barely found anywhere that freezes. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,190 research-grade observations of Furcraea foetida 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 Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.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 16 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.
- Agave bulbosa K.Koch
- Agave commelini Salm-Dyck
- Agave foetida L.
- Agave gigantea (Vent.) D.Dietr.
- Agave madagascariensis (Haw.) Salm-Dyck
- Aloe foetida (L.) Crantz
- Fourcroya gigantea (Vent.) Hook.
- Funium piliferum Willemet
- Furcraea atroviridis Jacobi & Göpp.
- Furcraea barilletti Jacobi
- Furcraea commelyni (Salm-Dyck) Kunth
- Furcraea gigantea Vent.
- Furcraea gigantea var. mediopicta Trel.
- Furcraea madagascariensis Haw.
- Furcraea viridis Hemsl.
- Furcraea watsoniana Sander
Sourcesevery claim on this page
- World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
- iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
- Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
- 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.