Lasiosiphon glaucus

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Lasiosiphon glaucus, photographed by John Brew — fig. c John Brew, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 61768510

Lasiosiphon glaucus, photographed by Ajit Ampalakkad — fig. d Ajit Ampalakkad, CC0 1.0 / obs. 12905917

Lasiosiphon glaucus, photographed by Dinesh Valke — fig. e Dinesh Valke, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 153452409

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 13 botanical countries

Native distribution of Lasiosiphon glaucus, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Cameroon	CMN	AFRICA
DR Congo	ZAI
Ethiopia	ETH
Kenya	KEN
Malawi	MLW
Mozambique	MOZ
Nigeria	NGA
Sudan-South Sudan	SUD
Tanzania	TAN
Uganda	UGA
Zambia	ZAM
India	IND	ASIA-TROPICAL
Sri Lanka	SRL

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 43 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	5.7 °C	13.8 °C	17.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	20.5 °C	32.8 °C	34.5 °C
Annual rainfall	1,455 mm	3,288 mm	5,132 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	5 mm	9 mm	159 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 43 research-grade observations of Lasiosiphon glaucus 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 Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.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 17 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.

Gnidia eriocephala Meisn.
Gnidia eriocephala Wall. ex J.Graham
Gnidia glauca (Fresen.) Gilg
Gnidia glauca var. glauca
Gnidia hugelii Meisn.
Gnidia monticola Miq.
Gnidia rivae Gilg
Gnidia volkensii Gilg
Gnidiopsis monticola Tiegh.
Lachnaea sphaerocephala Burm.f.
Lasiosiphon eriocephalus Decne.
Lasiosiphon eriocephalus var. zeylanicus Meisn.
Lasiosiphon huegelii Meisn.
Lasiosiphon metzianus Miq.
Lasiosiphon rivae (Gilg) H.Pearson
Lasiosiphon speciosus Decne.
Passerina cephalophora Thunb.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
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.