Gardenia volkensiiK.Schum.

common gardenia

WFO wfo-0000971256 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Gardenia volkensii, photographed by Margaret Burger
fig. a Margaret Burger, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2021-06-26 / obs. 139977533
Gardenia volkensii, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. b Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 63418473
Gardenia volkensii, photographed by Jonathan Whitaker
fig. c Jonathan Whitaker, CC0 1.0 / obs. 54985518
Gardenia volkensii, photographed by Mike Musgrave
fig. d Mike Musgrave, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 50093415
Gardenia volkensii, photographed by Ronald Flipphi
fig. e Ronald Flipphi, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 31144253
Gardenia volkensii, photographed by Jean-Paul Boerekamps
fig. f Jean-Paul Boerekamps, CC0 1.0 / obs. 198789665
Gardenia volkensii, photographed by Robert Taylor
fig. g Robert Taylor, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 192115839
Gardenia volkensii, photographed by Dave Richardson
fig. h Dave Richardson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 190019513

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 16 botanical countries

Regions where Gardenia volkensii is native: Angola, Botswana, Caprivi Strip, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Kenya, KwaZulu-Natal, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Northern Provinces, Somalia, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe AngolaBotswanaCaprivi StripEswatiniEthiopiaKenyaKwaZulu-NatalMalawiMozambiqueNamibiaNorthern ProvincesSomaliaTanzaniaUgandaZambiaZimbabwe
Native distribution of Gardenia volkensii, 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.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Angola ANG AFRICA
Botswana BOT
Caprivi Strip CPV
Eswatini SWZ
Ethiopia ETH
Kenya KEN
KwaZulu-Natal NAT
Malawi MLW
Mozambique MOZ
Namibia NAM
Northern Provinces TVL
Somalia SOM
Tanzania TAN
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.

Flowering 88 in flower of 202 examined

Peak flowering in Sep. Each bar is the share of Gardenia volkensii 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. 88 of 202 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 596 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 4.9 °C 8.7 °C 14.2 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 26.9 °C 30.1 °C 34.1 °C
Annual rainfall 413 mm 599 mm 942 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 2 mm 15 mm 76 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 596 research-grade observations of Gardenia volkensii 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 7 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.

  • Gardenia saundersiae N.E.Br.
  • Gardenia somalensis Chiov.
  • Gardenia somaliensis var. tubicalyx Chiov.
  • Gardenia spatulifolia Stapf & Hutch.
  • Gardenia stupinocarpa Chiov.
  • Gardenia volkensii var. somalensis (Chiov.) Cufod.
  • Gardenia volkesii var. somalensis (Chiov.) Cufod.

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.