Mesembryanthemum cryptanthumHook.f.

Babies' toes

WFO wfo-0000371500 Accepted WFO 2026-06 4 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–d · 1 observation

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 1 time, 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.

Mesembryanthemum cryptanthum, photographed by Olivier Argagnon
fig. a Olivier Argagnon, CC BY 4.0 / 2019-03-27 / obs. 179288988
Mesembryanthemum cryptanthum, photographed by Olivier Argagnon
fig. b Olivier Argagnon, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 179289004
Mesembryanthemum cryptanthum, photographed by Olivier Argagnon
fig. c Olivier Argagnon, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 179289011
Mesembryanthemum cryptanthum, photographed by Olivier Argagnon
fig. d Olivier Argagnon, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 179289000

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
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Accession
K000076563
Filed as
Mesembryanthemum cryptanthum Hook.fil.
Det. by
[illegible]
Collected
Burchell, Dr.
Origin
SH
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 16 botanical countries

Regions where Mesembryanthemum cryptanthum is native: Algeria, Angola, Canary Is., Cape Provinces, Egypt, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Namibia, St.Helena, Western Sahara, Gulf States, Lebanon-Syria, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Sinai AlgeriaAngolaCape ProvincesEgyptLibyaMauritaniaMoroccoNamibiaWestern SaharaGulf StatesLebanon-SyriaPalestineSaudi ArabiaSinai Canary Is.St.Helena
Native distribution of Mesembryanthemum cryptanthum, 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
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Angola ANG
Canary Is. CNY
Cape Provinces CPP
Egypt EGY
Libya LBY
Mauritania MTN
Morocco MOR
Namibia NAM
St.Helena STH
Western Sahara WSA
Gulf States GST ASIA-TEMPERATE
Lebanon-Syria LBS
Palestine PAL
Saudi Arabia SAU
Sinai SIN

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 8.9 °C 11.3 °C 19.0 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 20.0 °C 24.0 °C 34.9 °C
Annual rainfall 21 mm 26 mm 561 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 1 mm 3 mm 84 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 90 research-grade observations of Mesembryanthemum cryptanthum 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.

  • Aizoon theurkauffii Maire
  • Hydrodea bossiana Dinter
  • Hydrodea cryptantha (Hook.f.) N.E.Br.
  • Hydrodea hampdenii N.E.Br.
  • Hydrodea sarcocalycantha (Dinter & A.Berger) Dinter
  • Mesembryanthemum dactylinum Welw. ex Oliv.
  • Mesembryanthemum forskahlii Hochst. ex Boiss.
  • Mesembryanthemum forsskahlii Hochst. ex Boiss.
  • Mesembryanthemum gaussenii Leredde
  • Mesembryanthemum geniculiflorum Forssk.
  • Mesembryanthemum sarcocalycanthum Dinter & A.Berger
  • Mesembryanthemum theurkauffii (Maire) Maire
  • Opophytum cryptanthum (Hook.f.) Gerbaulet
  • Opophytum dactylinum (Welw. ex Oliv.) N.E.Br.
  • Opophytum forsskahlii (Hochst. ex Boiss.) N.E.Br.
  • Opophytum gaussenii (Leredde) H.Jacobsen ex Greuter & Burdet
  • Opophytum theurkauffii (Maire) Maire

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. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. 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.