Indigofera cordifoliaB.Heyne ex Roth

WFO wfo-0000191414 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 6 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 6 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.

Indigofera cordifolia, photographed by P Jeganathan
fig. a P Jeganathan, CC BY 4.0 / 2019-08-20 / obs. 49146699

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
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
4807236
Filed as
Indigofera cordifolia B.Heyne ex Roth
Det. by
not recorded on this sheet
Collected
R. R. Stewart 1935-09
Origin
PK
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 23 botanical countries

Regions where Indigofera cordifolia is native: Cape Verde, Chad, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Socotra, Sudan-South Sudan, Afghanistan, China Southeast, Gulf States, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Assam, India, Jawa, Laccadive Is., Lesser Sunda Is., Myanmar, Pakistan, West Himalaya ChadEgyptEritreaEthiopiaMaliMauritaniaNigerSudan-South SudanAfghanistanChina SoutheastGulf StatesOmanSaudi ArabiaAssamIndiaJawaLesser Sunda Is.MyanmarPakistanWest Himalaya Cape VerdeLaccadive Is.
Native distribution of Indigofera cordifolia, 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
Cape Verde CVI AFRICA
Chad CHA
Egypt EGY
Eritrea ERI
Ethiopia ETH
Mali MLI
Mauritania MTN
Niger NGR
Socotra SOC
Sudan-South Sudan SUD
Assam ASS ASIA-TROPICAL
India IND
Jawa JAW
Laccadive Is. LDV
Lesser Sunda Is. LSI
Myanmar MYA
Pakistan PAK
West Himalaya WHM
Afghanistan AFG ASIA-TEMPERATE
China Southeast CHS
Gulf States GST
Oman OMA
Saudi Arabia SAU

Not drawn on the map: Socotra. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is listed rather than guessed at.

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 96 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 8.6 °C 14.7 °C 18.9 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 34.2 °C 37.9 °C 41.4 °C
Annual rainfall 292 mm 840 mm 1,299 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 2 mm 11 mm 26 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 96 research-grade observations of Indigofera cordifolia 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 4 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.

  • Anil cordifolia (B.Heyne ex Roth) Kuntze
  • Heylandia cordifolia (B.Heyne ex Roth) Graham
  • Indigofera jaisalmerica C.S.Purohit & Kulloli
  • Indigofera jodhpurensis Bhellum, Dhar & Magotra

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.