Hylodesmum repandum(Vahl) H.Ohashi & R.R.Mill

WFO wfo-0000205451 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Hylodesmum repandum, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. a Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-05-20 / obs. 202499421

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.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
Smithsonian, US National Herbarium
Accession
US 3716199
Filed as
Hylodesmum repandum (Vahl) H.Ohashi & R.R.Mill
Det. by
Strong, Mark T., (BOT), Smithsonian Institution - National Museum of Natural History (UNITED STATES)
Collected
not recorded
Origin
ET
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC0 1.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. We link to the digitised sheet rather than rehosting it, because the holding institutions do not serve their images to third parties reliably and we are not going to show you a picture we cannot actually deliver. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 46 botanical countries

Regions where Hylodesmum repandum is native: Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Provinces, Comoros, DR Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Gabon, Guinea, Gulf of Guinea Is., Kenya, KwaZulu-Natal, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Northern Provinces, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Sudan-South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, China South-Central, Yemen, Assam, Borneo, East Himalaya, India, Jawa, Laos, Lesser Sunda Is., Malaya, Maluku, Myanmar, New Guinea, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Sulawesi, Sumatera, Thailand, Vietnam AngolaBurundiCameroonCape ProvincesDR CongoEquatorial GuineaEritreaEswatiniEthiopiaGabonGuineaGulf of Guinea Is.KenyaKwaZulu-NatalMadagascarMalawiMozambiqueNigeriaNorthern ProvincesRwandaSierra LeoneSudan-South SudanTanzaniaUgandaZambiaZimbabweChina South-CentralYemenAssamBorneoEast HimalayaIndiaJawaLaosLesser Sunda Is.MalayaMalukuMyanmarNew GuineaPhilippinesSri LankaSulawesiSumateraThailandVietnam Comoros
Native distribution of Hylodesmum repandum, 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
Angola ANG AFRICA
Burundi BUR
Cameroon CMN
Cape Provinces CPP
Comoros COM
DR Congo ZAI
Equatorial Guinea EQG
Eritrea ERI
Eswatini SWZ
Ethiopia ETH
Gabon GAB
Guinea GUI
Gulf of Guinea Is. GGI
Kenya KEN
KwaZulu-Natal NAT
Madagascar MDG
Malawi MLW
Mozambique MOZ
Nigeria NGA
Northern Provinces TVL
Rwanda RWA
Sierra Leone SIE
Sudan-South Sudan SUD
Tanzania TAN
Uganda UGA
Zambia ZAM
Zimbabwe ZIM
Assam ASS ASIA-TROPICAL
Borneo BOR
East Himalaya EHM
India IND
Jawa JAW
Laos LAO
Lesser Sunda Is. LSI
Malaya MLY
Maluku MOL
Myanmar MYA
New Guinea NWG
Philippines PHI
Sri Lanka SRL
Sulawesi SUL
Sumatera SUM
Thailand THA
Vietnam VIE
China South-Central CHC ASIA-TEMPERATE
Yemen YEM

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 40 in flower of 42 examined

Proportion of examined Hylodesmum repandum in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 3 3 too few examined
Feb 6 6 100% 61% to 100%
Mar 4 4 too few examined
Apr 10 10 100% 72% to 100%
May 8 8 100% 68% to 100%
Jun 2 2 too few examined
Jul 2 2 too few examined
Aug 0 0 too few examined
Sep 1 1 too few examined
Oct 0 0 too few examined
Nov 2 2 too few examined
Dec 2 4 too few examined

Peak flowering in Feb. Each bar is the share of Hylodesmum repandum 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. 40 of 42 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 9 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 274 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 0.7 °C 5.4 °C 14.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 19.9 °C 24.0 °C 26.9 °C
Annual rainfall 733 mm 1,161 mm 3,201 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 30 mm 53 mm 362 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 274 research-grade observations of Hylodesmum repandum 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 23 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.

  • Aeschynomene remota Poir.
  • Anarthrosyne scalpe Klotzsch
  • Desmodium abyssinicum DC.
  • Desmodium afrum Eckl. & Zeyh.
  • Desmodium aparine Chiov.
  • Desmodium caffrum Eckl. & Zeyh.
  • Desmodium remotum (Poir.) Drake
  • Desmodium repandum (Vahl) Poir.
  • Desmodium scalpe DC.
  • Desmodium schimperi Hochst. ex A.Rich.
  • Desmodium strangulatum Wight & Arn.
  • Desmodium strangulatum var. parvulum Miq.
  • Desmodium trichocaulon Hassk.
  • Hedysarum abyssinicum Hoffmanns.
  • Hedysarum ignescens Zipp. ex Miq.
  • Hedysarum repandum Vahl
  • Hedysarum scalpe Comm. ex DC.
  • Meibomia repanda (Vahl) Kuntze
  • Meibomia scalpe (DC.) Kuntze
  • Papilionopsis stylidioides Steenis
  • Pleurolobus remotus (Poir.) J.St.-Hil.
  • Podocarpium repandum (Vahl) Yen C.Yang & P.H.Huang
  • Podocarpium repandum (Vahl) Y.C.Yang & P.H.Huang

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.