Melicytus obovatus(Kirk) Garn.-Jones

WFO wfo-0001233437 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Melicytus obovatus, photographed by Jon Sullivan
fig. a Jon Sullivan, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-02 / obs. 195816094
Melicytus obovatus, photographed by Jon Sullivan
fig. b Jon Sullivan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195814785
Melicytus obovatus, photographed by Jon Sullivan
fig. c Jon Sullivan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195611834
Melicytus obovatus, photographed by Jon Sullivan
fig. d Jon Sullivan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195786923
Melicytus obovatus, photographed by Jon Sullivan
fig. e Jon Sullivan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195589528
Melicytus obovatus, photographed by gnapp
fig. f gnapp, CC0 1.0 / obs. 186199197
Melicytus obovatus, photographed by naturewatchwidow
fig. g naturewatchwidow, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 178977680
Melicytus obovatus, photographed by naturewatchwidow
fig. h naturewatchwidow, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 113934467

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 2 botanical countries

Regions where Melicytus obovatus is native: New Zealand North, New Zealand South New Zealand NorthNew Zealand South
Native distribution of Melicytus obovatus, 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
New Zealand North NZN AUSTRALASIA
New Zealand South NZS

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 90 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 0.8 °C 2.1 °C 6.8 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 16.9 °C 17.5 °C 22.6 °C
Annual rainfall 662 mm 1,851 mm 2,784 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 137 mm 344 mm 533 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 90 research-grade observations of Melicytus obovatus 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 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.

  • Hymenanthera obovata Kirk

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.