Gyminda latifolia(Sw.) Urb.

West Indian false box

WFO wfo-0000712103 Accepted WFO 2026-06 3 photographs CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–c · 1 observation

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 1 time, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Gyminda latifolia, photographed by Kurt Miller
fig. a Kurt Miller, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-02-24 / obs. 180654228
Gyminda latifolia, photographed by Kurt Miller
fig. b Kurt Miller, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 180654248
Gyminda latifolia, photographed by Kurt Miller
fig. c Kurt Miller, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 180661824

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
01052949
Filed as
Gyminda latifolia (Sw.) Urb.
Det. by
J. L. Luteyn 1985-04-03
Collected
J. L. Luteyn 1985-04-03
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 15 botanical countries

Regions where Gyminda latifolia is native: Florida, Mexico Gulf, Mexico Northeast, Mexico Southeast, Bahamas, Cayman Is., Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Leeward Is., Puerto Rico, Trinidad-Tobago, Turks-Caicos Is., Windward Is. FloridaMexico GulfMexico NortheastMexico SoutheastCubaDominican RepublicHaitiJamaicaPuerto RicoTrinidad-Tobago BahamasCayman Is.Leeward Is.Turks-Caicos Is.Windward Is.
Native distribution of Gyminda latifolia, 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
Bahamas BAH SOUTHERN AMERICA
Cayman Is. CAY
Cuba CUB
Dominican Republic DOM
Haiti HAI
Jamaica JAM
Leeward Is. LEE
Puerto Rico PUE
Trinidad-Tobago TRT
Turks-Caicos Is. TCI
Windward Is. WIN
Florida FLA NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Gulf MXG
Mexico Northeast MXE
Mexico Southeast MXT

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 44 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 19.9 °C 21.2 °C 24.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 27.8 °C 29.0 °C 30.8 °C
Annual rainfall 1,070 mm 1,731 mm 2,249 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 140 mm 255 mm 368 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 44 research-grade observations of Gyminda latifolia 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 13 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.

  • Crossopetalum latifolium (Sw.) Kuntze
  • Gyminda grisebachii Sarg.
  • Gyminda grisebachii var. glaucescens Sarg.
  • Gyminda grisebachii var. glaucifolia (C.Wright ex Griseb.) Sarg.
  • Gyminda latifolia var. glaucescens (Sarg.) Small ex Sarg.
  • Gyminda latifolia var. glaucifolia (C.Wright ex Griseb.) Small
  • Myginda integrifolia f. glaucifolia C.Wright ex Griseb.
  • Myginda latifolia Sw.
  • Myginda latifolia var. styliflora Griseb.
  • Rhacoma integrifolia M.Gómez
  • Rhacoma latifolia (Sw.) M.Gómez
  • Rhacoma latifolia (Sw.) Loes.
  • Rhacoma vildosolaeanum M.Gómez

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.