Handroanthus ochraceus(Cham.) Mattos

WFO wfo-0000778601 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Handroanthus ochraceus, photographed by Malo Ramírez
fig. a Malo Ramírez, CC0 1.0 / 2020-04-25 / obs. 69599684

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 19 botanical countries

Regions where Handroanthus ochraceus is native: Argentina Northwest, Bolivia, Brazil North, Brazil Northeast, Brazil South, Brazil Southeast, Brazil West-Central, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guyana, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panamá, Paraguay, Peru, Trinidad-Tobago, Venezuela Argentina NorthwestBoliviaBrazil NorthBrazil NortheastBrazil SouthBrazil SoutheastBrazil West-CentralColombiaCosta RicaEcuadorEl SalvadorGuyanaHondurasNicaraguaPanamáParaguayPeruTrinidad-TobagoVenezuela
Native distribution of Handroanthus ochraceus, 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
Argentina Northwest AGW SOUTHERN AMERICA
Bolivia BOL
Brazil North BZN
Brazil Northeast BZE
Brazil South BZS
Brazil Southeast BZL
Brazil West-Central BZC
Colombia CLM
Costa Rica COS
Ecuador ECU
El Salvador ELS
Guyana GUY
Honduras HON
Nicaragua NIC
Panamá PAN
Paraguay PAR
Peru PER
Trinidad-Tobago TRT
Venezuela VEN

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 121 in flower of 152 examined

Proportion of examined Handroanthus ochraceus in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 3 8 38% 14% to 69%
Feb 3 3 too few examined
Mar 3 6 50% 19% to 81%
Apr 9 15 60% 36% to 80%
May 3 4 too few examined
Jun 1 1 too few examined
Jul 18 21 86% 65% to 95%
Aug 51 52 98% 90% to 100%
Sep 25 29 86% 69% to 95%
Oct 5 7 71% 36% to 92%
Nov 0 4 too few examined
Dec 0 2 too few examined

Peak flowering in Aug. Each bar is the share of Handroanthus ochraceus 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. 121 of 152 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 5 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. 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 156 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 12.0 °C 16.4 °C 24.2 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 26.0 °C 29.2 °C 34.0 °C
Annual rainfall 1,231 mm 1,716 mm 3,433 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 13 mm 39 mm 274 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 156 research-grade observations of Handroanthus ochraceus 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 20 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.

  • Bignonia heteropoda DC.
  • Bignonia heterotricha DC.
  • Bignonia tomentosa Pav. ex DC.
  • Tabebuia blakeana Pittier
  • Tabebuia heteropoda (DC.) Sandwith
  • Tabebuia heterotricha (DC.) Hemsl.
  • Tabebuia hypodictyon (DC.) Standl.
  • Tabebuia neochrysantha A.H.Gentry
  • Tabebuia ochracea (Cham.) Standl.
  • Tabebuia ochracea subsp. heteropoda (DC.) A.H.Gentry
  • Tabebuia ochracea subsp. heterotricha (DC.) A.H.Gentry
  • Tabebuia ochracea subsp. neochrysantha (A.H.Gentry) A.H.Gentry
  • Tecoma campinae Kraenzl.
  • Tecoma grandiceps Kraenzl.
  • Tecoma hassleri Sprague
  • Tecoma hemmendorffiana Kraenzl.
  • Tecoma heteropoda DC.
  • Tecoma heterotricha DC.
  • Tecoma hypodictyon DC.
  • Tecoma ochracea Cham.

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. 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.