Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations
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 6 botanical countries
| Region | TDWG code | Continent |
|---|---|---|
| Cape Provinces | CPP | AFRICA |
| Free State | OFS | |
| KwaZulu-Natal | NAT | |
| Lesotho | LES | |
| Namibia | NAM | |
| Northern Provinces | TVL |
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 180 observations
| Condition | 5th percentile | Median | 95th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coldest month, mean daily low | -2.3 °C | 3.2 °C | 8.3 °C |
| Warmest month, mean daily high | 21.4 °C | 28.3 °C | 31.6 °C |
| Annual rainfall | 196 mm | 430 mm | 994 mm |
| Rainfall in the driest quarter | 17 mm | 46 mm | 84 mm |
It is found where winters bring light frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 180 research-grade observations of Heliophila carnosa 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 Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.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 17 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.
- Carpopodium carnosum (Thunb.) Eckl. & Zeyh.
- Cheiranthus carnosus Thunb.
- Cheiranthus gramineus Thunb.
- Heliophila abrotanifolia Banks ex DC.
- Heliophila abrotanifolia var. tenuiloba Sond.
- Heliophila graminea DC.
- Heliophila grandiflora Schltr.
- Heliophila obliqua E.Mey. ex Harv. & Sond.
- Heliophila platysiliqua R.Br.
- Heliophila subcornuta Beauverd
- Heliophila succulenta Banks ex DC.
- Heliophila sulcata Conrath
- Heliophila sulcata var. modestior O.E.Schulz
- Heliophila tripartita Thunb.
- Hesperis carnosa (Thunb.) Poir.
- Hesperis graminea Poir.
- Leptormus tripartitus Eckl. & Zeyh.
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.