Grewia occidentalis (crossberry)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Grewia occidentalis, photographed by Corne Brink — fig. a Corne Brink, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-05-02 / obs. 194250138

Grewia occidentalis, photographed by Justin Ponder — fig. b Justin Ponder, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 193822109

Grewia occidentalis, photographed by Nicola van Berkel — fig. c Nicola van Berkel, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 194259833

Grewia occidentalis, photographed by Ricus Nel — fig. d Ricus Nel, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 192388807

Grewia occidentalis, photographed by Shaun Swanepoel — fig. e Shaun Swanepoel, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 187875022

Grewia occidentalis, photographed by Tony Rebelo — fig. f Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 175840508

Grewia occidentalis, photographed by Mahomed Desai — fig. h Mahomed Desai, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 174659029

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 8 botanical countries

Native distribution of Grewia occidentalis, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Cape Provinces	CPP	AFRICA
Eswatini	SWZ
Free State	OFS
KwaZulu-Natal	NAT
Lesotho	LES
Mozambique	MOZ
Northern Provinces	TVL
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 434 in flower of 496 examined

92%

74%

68%

69%

86%

64%

80%

88%

97%

96%

98%

97%

Proportion of examined Grewia occidentalis in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	23	25	92%	75% to 98%
Feb	29	39	74%	59% to 85%
Mar	19	28	68%	49% to 82%
Apr	44	64	69%	57% to 79%
May	18	21	86%	65% to 95%
Jun	7	11	64%	35% to 85%
Jul	12	15	80%	55% to 93%
Aug	21	24	88%	69% to 96%
Sep	28	29	97%	83% to 99%
Oct	70	73	96%	89% to 99%
Nov	101	103	98%	93% to 99%
Dec	62	64	97%	89% to 99%

Peak flowering in Nov. Each bar is the share of Grewia occidentalis 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. 434 of 496 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.

Also published as 6 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.

Grewia chirindae Baker f.
Grewia microphylla Weim.
Grewia obtusifolia Eckl. & Zeyh.
Grewia seringeana Hamon bis
Grewia trinervis E.Mey.
Grewia ulmifolia Salisb.

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.