Haworthia arachnoidea(L.) Duval

WFO wfo-0000648826 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Haworthia arachnoidea, photographed by James Deacon
fig. a James Deacon, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2020-10-15 / obs. 102988359
Haworthia arachnoidea, photographed by James Deacon
fig. b James Deacon, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 106398855
Haworthia arachnoidea, photographed by Mahomed Desai
fig. c Mahomed Desai, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 92086680
Haworthia arachnoidea, photographed by Christiaan Viljoen
fig. d Christiaan Viljoen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 85461290
Haworthia arachnoidea, photographed by James Deacon
fig. e James Deacon, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 177662431
Haworthia arachnoidea, photographed by Kevin Murray
fig. f Kevin Murray, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 22830568
Haworthia arachnoidea, photographed by Matt Berger
fig. g Matt Berger, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 162722938
Haworthia arachnoidea, photographed by Brian du Preez
fig. h Brian du Preez, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 71205600

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 1 botanical country

Regions where Haworthia arachnoidea is native: Cape Provinces Cape Provinces
Native distribution of Haworthia arachnoidea, 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
Cape Provinces CPP AFRICA

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 79 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 1.8 °C 5.4 °C 6.5 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 25.7 °C 29.5 °C 30.7 °C
Annual rainfall 242 mm 385 mm 605 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 19 mm 69 mm 120 mm

It is found where winters are cool but frost is light or absent. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 79 research-grade observations of Haworthia arachnoidea 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 56 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.

  • Aloe arachnoidea (L.) Burm.f.
  • Aloe arachnoidea var. pumila Aiton
  • Aloe arachnoides Thunb.
  • Aloe arachnoides var. communis Aiton
  • Aloe pumila var. arachnoidea L.
  • Aloe setosa Schult. & Schult.f.
  • Apicra arachnoides (L.) Willd.
  • Catevala arachnoidea (L.) Medik.
  • Catevala setata (Haw.) Kuntze
  • Haworthia angiras M.Hayashi
  • Haworthia arachnoidea subsp. pearsonii (C.H.Wright) Halda
  • Haworthia arachnoidea subsp. setata (Haw.) Halda
  • Haworthia arachnoidea var. angiras (M.Hayashi) Breuer
  • Haworthia arachnoidea var. gigas (Poelln.) M.Hayashi
  • Haworthia arachnoidea var. joubertii (M.Hayashi) Breuer
  • Haworthia arachnoidea var. laxa (M.Hayashi) Breuer
  • Haworthia arachnoidea var. limbata (M.Hayashi) Breuer
  • Haworthia arachnoidea var. minor Haw.
  • Haworthia arachnoidea var. pearsonii (C.H.Wright) Halda
  • Haworthia aranea (A.Berger) M.B.Bayer
  • Haworthia aranea var. candida (M.Hayashi) Breuer
  • Haworthia aristata subsp. helmiae (Poelln.) Halda
  • Haworthia aristata var. helmiae (Poelln.) Pilbeam
  • Haworthia bolusii var. aranea A.Berger

and 32 more.

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.