Geophila repens(L.) I.M.Johnst.

corrida yerba de guava

WFO wfo-0000972431 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Geophila repens, photographed by Alexis López Hernández
fig. a Alexis López Hernández, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-26 / obs. 200897700

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
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
01090170
Filed as
Geophila repens (L.) I.M.Johnst.
Det. by
K. C. R. Es 2004-01-01
Collected
I. Vélez 1936-02-08
Origin
PR
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

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 32 botanical countries

Regions where Geophila repens is native: Mexico Southeast, Mexico Southwest, Argentina Northeast, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil North, Brazil Northeast, Brazil South, Brazil Southeast, Brazil West-Central, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Leeward Is., Nicaragua, Panamá, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Suriname, Trinidad-Tobago, Venezuela, Windward Is. Mexico SoutheastMexico SouthwestArgentina NortheastBelizeBoliviaBrazil NorthBrazil NortheastBrazil SouthBrazil SoutheastBrazil West-CentralColombiaCosta RicaCubaDominican RepublicEcuadorEl SalvadorFrench GuianaGuatemalaGuyanaHaitiHondurasJamaicaNicaraguaPanamáParaguayPeruPuerto RicoSurinameTrinidad-TobagoVenezuela Leeward Is.Windward Is.
Native distribution of Geophila repens, 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
Argentina Northeast AGE SOUTHERN AMERICA
Belize BLZ
Bolivia BOL
Brazil North BZN
Brazil Northeast BZE
Brazil South BZS
Brazil Southeast BZL
Brazil West-Central BZC
Colombia CLM
Costa Rica COS
Cuba CUB
Dominican Republic DOM
Ecuador ECU
El Salvador ELS
French Guiana FRG
Guatemala GUA
Guyana GUY
Haiti HAI
Honduras HON
Jamaica JAM
Leeward Is. LEE
Nicaragua NIC
Panamá PAN
Paraguay PAR
Peru PER
Puerto Rico PUE
Suriname SUR
Trinidad-Tobago TRT
Venezuela VEN
Windward Is. WIN
Mexico Southeast MXT NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Southwest MXS

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 43 in flower of 140 examined

Proportion of examined Geophila repens in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 5 13 38% 18% to 64%
Feb 3 8 38% 14% to 69%
Mar 1 12 8% 1% to 35%
Apr 0 17 0% 0% to 18%
May 6 11 55% 28% to 79%
Jun 4 11 36% 15% to 65%
Jul 3 9 33% 12% to 65%
Aug 4 7 57% 25% to 84%
Sep 0 9 0% 0% to 30%
Oct 5 17 29% 13% to 53%
Nov 7 14 50% 27% to 73%
Dec 5 12 42% 19% to 68%

Peak flowering in Aug. Each bar is the share of Geophila repens 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. 43 of 140 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 704 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 12.0 °C 21.3 °C 24.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 27.6 °C 29.9 °C 32.9 °C
Annual rainfall 1,404 mm 2,349 mm 4,494 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 29 mm 237 mm 619 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 704 research-grade observations of Geophila repens 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 12 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.

  • Carinta repens (L.) Bremek.
  • Carinta repens (L.) L.B.Sm. & Downs
  • Carinta repens var. americana Bremek.
  • Cephaelis reniformis Kunth
  • Geocardia repens (L.) Bakh.f.
  • Geophila reniformis (Kunth) Cham. & Schltdl.
  • Geophila reniformis var. americana Cham. & Schltdl.
  • Geophila violacea (Aubl.) DC.
  • Psychotria repens (L.) L.
  • Psychotria violacea Aubl.
  • Rondeletia repens L.
  • Uragoga reniformis (Kunth) Baill.

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.