Ipomoea polymorphaRoem. & Schult.

WFO wfo-0001298425 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 4 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 4 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.

Ipomoea polymorpha, photographed by 國立臺灣博物館
fig. a 國立臺灣博物館, CC BY 4.0 / 2020-01-23 / obs. 60977924

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 24 botanical countries

Regions where Ipomoea polymorpha is native: DR Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Hainan, Nansei-shoto, Taiwan, Cambodia, Jawa, Lesser Sunda Is., New Guinea, Philippines, South China Sea, Thailand, Vietnam, New South Wales, Northern Territory, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia DR CongoEritreaEthiopiaKenyaRwandaTanzaniaUgandaZambiaHainanTaiwanCambodiaJawaLesser Sunda Is.New GuineaPhilippinesThailandVietnamNew South WalesNorthern TerritoryQueenslandSouth AustraliaWestern Australia Nansei-shotoSouth China Sea
Native distribution of Ipomoea polymorpha, 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
DR Congo ZAI AFRICA
Eritrea ERI
Ethiopia ETH
Kenya KEN
Rwanda RWA
Tanzania TAN
Uganda UGA
Zambia ZAM
Cambodia CBD ASIA-TROPICAL
Jawa JAW
Lesser Sunda Is. LSI
New Guinea NWG
Philippines PHI
South China Sea SCS
Thailand THA
Vietnam VIE
New South Wales NSW AUSTRALASIA
Northern Territory NTA
Queensland QLD
South Australia SOA
Western Australia WAU
Hainan CHH ASIA-TEMPERATE
Nansei-shoto NNS
Taiwan TAI

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 78 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 6.6 °C 15.2 °C 21.5 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 28.5 °C 32.8 °C 37.1 °C
Annual rainfall 185 mm 983 mm 1,826 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 4 mm 36 mm 71 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 78 research-grade observations of Ipomoea polymorpha 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 11 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.

  • Convolvulus commatophyllus Steud. ex Choisy
  • Convolvulus defloratus Choisy
  • Convolvulus nolanaeflorus Zipp. ex Span.
  • Convolvulus nolaniflorus Zipp. ex Span.
  • Convolvulus procumbens Lund ex Choisy
  • Convolvulus robertianus Spreng.
  • Dimerodiscus fallax Gagnep.
  • Ipomoea adspersa Mart. ex Meisn.
  • Ipomoea commatophylla A.Rich.
  • Ipomoea pumila Span.
  • Ipomoea tashiroi Matsum.

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.