Hypoestes triflora(Forssk.) Roem. & Schult.

WFO wfo-0000728672 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Hypoestes triflora, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. a Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-05-20 / obs. 204160358

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
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Accession
K000029406
Filed as
Hypoestes triflora (Forssk.) Roem. & Schult.
Det. by
Brummit, R.
Collected
Thomas, D.W. 1984-01-09
Origin
CM
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. 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 herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 34 botanical countries

Regions where Hypoestes triflora is native: Angola, Benin, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Provinces, DR Congo, Eritrea, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Gulf of Guinea Is., Kenya, KwaZulu-Natal, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Northern Provinces, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Sudan-South Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, China South-Central, Yemen, Assam, Bangladesh, East Himalaya, Myanmar, Nepal, Thailand AngolaBeninBurundiCameroonCape ProvincesDR CongoEritreaEswatiniEthiopiaGhanaGuineaGulf of Guinea Is.KenyaKwaZulu-NatalLiberiaMalawiMozambiqueNigeriaNorthern ProvincesRwandaSierra LeoneSudan-South SudanTanzaniaTogoUgandaZambiaChina South-CentralYemenAssamBangladeshEast HimalayaMyanmarNepalThailand
Native distribution of Hypoestes triflora, 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
Benin BEN
Burundi BUR
Cameroon CMN
Cape Provinces CPP
DR Congo ZAI
Eritrea ERI
Eswatini SWZ
Ethiopia ETH
Ghana GHA
Guinea GUI
Gulf of Guinea Is. GGI
Kenya KEN
KwaZulu-Natal NAT
Liberia LBR
Malawi MLW
Mozambique MOZ
Nigeria NGA
Northern Provinces TVL
Rwanda RWA
Sierra Leone SIE
Sudan-South Sudan SUD
Tanzania TAN
Togo TOG
Uganda UGA
Zambia ZAM
Assam ASS ASIA-TROPICAL
Bangladesh BAN
East Himalaya EHM
Myanmar MYA
Nepal NEP
Thailand THA
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 44 in flower of 44 examined

Proportion of examined Hypoestes triflora in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 3 3 too few examined
Feb 5 5 100% 57% to 100%
Mar 9 9 100% 70% to 100%
Apr 6 6 100% 61% to 100%
May 5 5 100% 57% to 100%
Jun 4 4 too few examined
Jul 4 4 too few examined
Aug 5 5 100% 57% to 100%
Sep 1 1 too few examined
Oct 1 1 too few examined
Nov 1 1 too few examined
Dec 0 0 too few examined

Peak flowering in Feb. Each bar is the share of Hypoestes triflora 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. 44 of 44 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 7 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 243 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 0.6 °C 5.0 °C 12.8 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 18.0 °C 23.5 °C 26.5 °C
Annual rainfall 775 mm 1,129 mm 3,193 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 24 mm 52 mm 248 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 243 research-grade observations of Hypoestes triflora 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 19 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.

  • Dicliptera riparia var. yunnanensis Hand.-Mazz.
  • Hypoestes acuminata Hochst. ex T.Anderson
  • Hypoestes adoensis Hochst. ex A.Rich.
  • Hypoestes adoensis var. andersonii Engl.
  • Hypoestes busii Pic.Serm.
  • Hypoestes caloi Chiov.
  • Hypoestes ciliata Lindau
  • Hypoestes consanguinea Lindau
  • Hypoestes inaequalis Lindau
  • Hypoestes kilimandscharica Lindau
  • Hypoestes microphylla Nees
  • Hypoestes phaylopsoides S.Moore
  • Hypoestes rosea Nees
  • Hypoestes sennii Chiov.
  • Hypoestes simensis Hochst. ex Schweinf.
  • Hypoestes toroensis S.Moore
  • Hypoestes uniflora Hochst.
  • Hypoestes wallichii Nees
  • Justicia triflora Forssk.

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.