Houstonia purpureaL.

Venus' pride

WFO wfo-0000215241 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Houstonia purpurea, photographed by mararaquel
fig. a mararaquel, CC0 1.0 / 2022-06-06 / obs. 203864587
Houstonia purpurea, photographed by Michael J. Papay
fig. b Michael J. Papay, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202026000
Houstonia purpurea, photographed by stephen
fig. c stephen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201648138
Houstonia purpurea, photographed by TERRI MEWBORN
fig. d TERRI MEWBORN, CC0 1.0 / obs. 201980715
Houstonia purpurea, photographed by Emily Summerbell
fig. e Emily Summerbell, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205482812
Houstonia purpurea, photographed by sarahalder
fig. f sarahalder, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201459958
Houstonia purpurea, photographed by Ben Smith
fig. g Ben Smith, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200831197
Houstonia purpurea, photographed by Michael J. Papay
fig. h Michael J. Papay, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200466316

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 Houstonia purpurea is native: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia AlabamaArkansasGeorgiaIllinoisIndianaKentuckyLouisianaMarylandMississippiMissouriNorth CarolinaOhioOklahomaPennsylvaniaSouth CarolinaTennesseeTexasVermontVirginiaWest Virginia Delaware
Native distribution of Houstonia purpurea, 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. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Alabama ALA NORTHERN AMERICA
Arkansas ARK
Delaware DEL
Georgia GEO
Illinois ILL
Indiana INI
Kentucky KTY
Louisiana LOU
Maryland MRY
Mississippi MSI
Missouri MSO
North Carolina NCA
Ohio OHI
Oklahoma OKL
Pennsylvania PEN
South Carolina SCA
Tennessee TEN
Texas TEX
Vermont VER
Virginia VRG
West Virginia WVA

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 949 in flower of 1,034 examined

Peak flowering in Jun. Each bar is the share of Houstonia purpurea 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. 949 of 1,034 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 5 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 2,044 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -4.8 °C -1.7 °C 1.9 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 24.2 °C 30.0 °C 31.9 °C
Annual rainfall 1,063 mm 1,284 mm 1,905 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 216 mm 266 mm 400 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 2,044 research-grade observations of Houstonia purpurea 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 42 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.

  • Anotis ciliolosa G.Don
  • Anotis lanceolata DC.
  • Anotis longifolia G.Don
  • Anotis purpurea (L.) G.Don
  • Chamisme purpurea (L.) Nieuwl.
  • Diodia frankii Steud. & Hochst. ex C.Presl
  • Hedyotis calycosa Shuttlew. ex A.Gray
  • Hedyotis caroliniana Raeusch.
  • Hedyotis ciliolata Torr. ex Spreng.
  • Hedyotis frankii C.Presl
  • Hedyotis lanceolata Poir.
  • Hedyotis nigricans var. rigidiuscula (A.Gray) Shinners
  • Hedyotis purpurea (L.) Torr. & A.Gray
  • Hedyotis purpurea f. albiflora (Standl.) Fosberg
  • Hedyotis purpurea f. leucantha (Standl.) Fosberg
  • Hedyotis purpurea f. pubescens (Britton) Fosberg
  • Hedyotis purpurea var. calycosa (A.Gray) C.Mohr
  • Hedyotis purpurea var. calycosa (A.Gray) Fosberg
  • Hedyotis purpurea var. montana (Small) Fosberg
  • Hedyotis umbellata Walter
  • Houstonia angustifolia Pursh
  • Houstonia angustifolia var. rigidiuscula A.Gray
  • Houstonia calycosa (A.Gray) Mohr
  • Houstonia lanceolata (Poir.) Britton

and 18 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. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. 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.