Lycium ferocissimumMiers

African boxthorn

WFO wfo-0001022883 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Lycium ferocissimum, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. a Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-04-29 / obs. 191842890
Lycium ferocissimum, photographed by Halema J
fig. b Halema J, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 192624468
Lycium ferocissimum, photographed by Dagmar Gleiss
fig. c Dagmar Gleiss, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 194460310
Lycium ferocissimum, photographed by Jon Sullivan
fig. d Jon Sullivan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 196061660
Lycium ferocissimum, photographed by Jon Sullivan
fig. e Jon Sullivan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 196060600
Lycium ferocissimum, photographed by Jon Sullivan
fig. f Jon Sullivan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 196062950
Lycium ferocissimum, photographed by Dylan Wishart
fig. g Dylan Wishart, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 198793978
Lycium ferocissimum, photographed by Jon Sullivan
fig. h Jon Sullivan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 196059328

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.

Flowering n = 601 observations

Peak flowering in Apr, from 601 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 1 synonym

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.

  • Lycium tenue var. ferocissimum (Miers) A.Terracc.

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.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.