Helicteres guazumifoliaKunth

WFO wfo-0000718108 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Helicteres guazumifolia, photographed by Anthony Batista
fig. a Anthony Batista, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-15 / obs. 197857415
Helicteres guazumifolia, photographed by Jake Rehage
fig. b Jake Rehage, CC0 1.0 / obs. 142828008
Helicteres guazumifolia, photographed by Alexis López Hernández
fig. c Alexis López Hernández, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 109024458
Helicteres guazumifolia, photographed by Alexis López Hernández
fig. d Alexis López Hernández, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 108530477
Helicteres guazumifolia, photographed by Alexis López Hernández
fig. e Alexis López Hernández, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 108530386
Helicteres guazumifolia, photographed by Alexis López Hernández
fig. f Alexis López Hernández, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 67996556
Helicteres guazumifolia, photographed by Alexis López Hernández
fig. g Alexis López Hernández, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 67996091
Helicteres guazumifolia, photographed by Alexis López Hernández
fig. h Alexis López Hernández, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 67995916

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 21 botanical countries

Regions where Helicteres guazumifolia is native: Mexico Central, Mexico Gulf, Mexico Northeast, Mexico Northwest, Mexico Southeast, Mexico Southwest, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil North, Brazil Northeast, Brazil West-Central, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panamá, Venezuela Mexico CentralMexico GulfMexico NortheastMexico NorthwestMexico SoutheastMexico SouthwestBelizeBoliviaBrazil NorthBrazil NortheastBrazil West-CentralColombiaCosta RicaCubaEl SalvadorGuatemalaGuyanaHondurasNicaraguaPanamáVenezuela
Native distribution of Helicteres guazumifolia, 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
Belize BLZ SOUTHERN AMERICA
Bolivia BOL
Brazil North BZN
Brazil Northeast BZE
Brazil West-Central BZC
Colombia CLM
Costa Rica COS
Cuba CUB
El Salvador ELS
Guatemala GUA
Guyana GUY
Honduras HON
Nicaragua NIC
Panamá PAN
Venezuela VEN
Mexico Central MXC NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Gulf MXG
Mexico Northeast MXE
Mexico Northwest MXN
Mexico Southeast MXT
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 94 in flower of 123 examined

Peak flowering in Aug. Each bar is the share of Helicteres guazumifolia 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. 94 of 123 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 2 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 258 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 14.9 °C 19.4 °C 23.7 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 28.6 °C 30.9 °C 34.0 °C
Annual rainfall 1,075 mm 1,862 mm 3,407 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 11 mm 92 mm 209 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 258 research-grade observations of Helicteres guazumifolia 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 5 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.

  • Helicteres biflora Sessé & Moc.
  • Helicteres carpinifolia C.Presl
  • Helicteres guazumifolia var. parvifolia K.Schum.
  • Helicteres mexicana Kunth
  • Helicteres retinophylla R.E.Fr.

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.