Heliophila juncea (stock sunspurge)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Heliophila juncea, photographed by Di Turner — fig. a Di Turner, CC0 1.0 / 2021-10-23 / obs. 166244419

Heliophila juncea, photographed by bullwooding — fig. d bullwooding, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 158792906

Heliophila juncea, photographed by Matt Berger — fig. e Matt Berger, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 161810604

Heliophila juncea, photographed by Tony Rebelo — fig. f Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 178048769

Heliophila juncea, photographed by Ryan van Huyssteen — fig. g Ryan van Huyssteen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 156280471

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

Native distribution of Heliophila juncea, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
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 426 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	1.1 °C	5.0 °C	8.5 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	24.3 °C	29.0 °C	31.3 °C
Annual rainfall	310 mm	517 mm	1,003 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	24 mm	49 mm	113 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 426 research-grade observations of Heliophila juncea 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.

Brachycarpaea capensis (L.) Fourc.
Brachycarpaea flava (L.f.) Druce
Brachycarpaea juncea (Bergius) Marais
Brachycarpaea laxa Sond.
Brachycarpaea linifolia Eckl. & Zeyh.
Brachycarpaea polygaloides Eckl. & Zeyh.
Brachycarpaea varians DC.
Cleome capensis L.
Cleome juncea P.J.Bergius
Cleome laxa Thunb.
Coronopus anomalus Spreng.
Heliophila cleomoides DC.
Heliophila flava L.f.

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.