Hibiscus rhodanthusGürke ex Schinz

WFO wfo-0000722984 Accepted WFO 2026-06 4 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–d · 3 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 3 times, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Hibiscus rhodanthus, photographed by i_c_riddell
fig. a i_c_riddell, CC BY 4.0 / 2017-10-29 / obs. 11504175
Hibiscus rhodanthus, photographed by i_c_riddell
fig. b i_c_riddell, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 12454649
Hibiscus rhodanthus, photographed by desertnaturalist
fig. c desertnaturalist, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 55312412
Hibiscus rhodanthus, photographed by desertnaturalist
fig. d desertnaturalist, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 55312044

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 8 botanical countries

Regions where Hibiscus rhodanthus is native: Angola, DR Congo, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe AngolaDR CongoMalawiMozambiqueTanzaniaUgandaZambiaZimbabwe
Native distribution of Hibiscus rhodanthus, 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
Angola ANG AFRICA
DR Congo ZAI
Malawi MLW
Mozambique MOZ
Tanzania TAN
Uganda UGA
Zambia ZAM
Zimbabwe ZIM

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 6.6 °C 10.0 °C 12.2 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 25.1 °C 29.0 °C 32.0 °C
Annual rainfall 785 mm 991 mm 2,135 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 1 mm 3 mm 14 mm

It is barely found anywhere that freezes. 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 Hibiscus rhodanthus 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 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.

  • Hibiscus carsonii Baker
  • Hibiscus corneti De Wild. & T.Durand
  • Hibiscus micranthus f. macranthus Baker f.
  • Hibiscus petraeus Hiern
  • Hibiscus welwitschii Hiern

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.