Garcinia livingstoneiT.Anderson

African MangosteenLivingstone's garciniaLowveld Mangosteen

WFO wfo-0000694422 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Garcinia livingstonei, photographed by National Geographic Okavango Wilderness Project
fig. a National Geographic Okavango Wilderness Project, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-07-27 / obs. 162650681
Garcinia livingstonei, photographed by Shaun Swanepoel
fig. b Shaun Swanepoel, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 105280555
Garcinia livingstonei, photographed by Shaun Swanepoel
fig. c Shaun Swanepoel, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 105287812
Garcinia livingstonei, photographed by Wynand Uys
fig. d Wynand Uys, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 132297717
Garcinia livingstonei, photographed by Benjamin Fredlund
fig. e Benjamin Fredlund, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 192367997
Garcinia livingstonei, photographed by Mike Musgrave
fig. f Mike Musgrave, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 50093280
Garcinia livingstonei, photographed by Robert Taylor
fig. g Robert Taylor, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 46529300
Garcinia livingstonei, photographed by Benjamin Fredlund
fig. h Benjamin Fredlund, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 117275855

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 28 botanical countries

Regions where Garcinia livingstonei is native: Angola, Botswana, Burkina, Cameroon, Caprivi Strip, Comoros, DR Congo, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Kenya, KwaZulu-Natal, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Northern Provinces, Senegal, Somalia, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe AngolaBotswanaBurkinaCameroonCaprivi StripDR CongoEswatiniEthiopiaGhanaGuineaGuinea-BissauIvory CoastKenyaKwaZulu-NatalMalawiMaliMozambiqueNamibiaNigeriaNorthern ProvincesSenegalSomaliaTanzaniaTogoUgandaZambiaZimbabwe Comoros
Native distribution of Garcinia livingstonei, 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
Botswana BOT
Burkina BKN
Cameroon CMN
Caprivi Strip CPV
Comoros COM
DR Congo ZAI
Eswatini SWZ
Ethiopia ETH
Ghana GHA
Guinea GUI
Guinea-Bissau GNB
Ivory Coast IVO
Kenya KEN
KwaZulu-Natal NAT
Malawi MLW
Mali MLI
Mozambique MOZ
Namibia NAM
Nigeria NGA
Northern Provinces TVL
Senegal SEN
Somalia SOM
Tanzania TAN
Togo TOG
Uganda UGA
Zambia ZAM
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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 329 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 6.0 °C 12.7 °C 18.6 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 26.2 °C 30.1 °C 34.2 °C
Annual rainfall 435 mm 776 mm 1,177 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 2 mm 30 mm 165 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 329 research-grade observations of Garcinia livingstonei 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 10 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.

  • Garcinia affinis (Chiov.) Chiov.
  • Garcinia angolensis Vesque
  • Garcinia baikieana Vesque
  • Garcinia baikieana var. togoensis Engl.
  • Garcinia ferrandii Chiov.
  • Garcinia ferrandii var. affinis Chiov.
  • Garcinia kilossaria Engl.
  • Garcinia livingstonei var. pallidinervia Engl.
  • Garcinia pallidinervia (Engl.) Engl.
  • Garcinia pendula Engl.

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.