Mesembryanthemum pallensAiton

WFO wfo-0000370830 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Mesembryanthemum pallens, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. a Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2021-05-02 / obs. 126618993
Mesembryanthemum pallens, photographed by douglaseustonbrown
fig. b douglaseustonbrown, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 49123395
Mesembryanthemum pallens, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. c Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 37435878
Mesembryanthemum pallens, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. d Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 40045011
Mesembryanthemum pallens, photographed by Simon Tamblyn
fig. e Simon Tamblyn, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 182718308
Mesembryanthemum pallens, photographed by Danie Palm
fig. f Danie Palm, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 101881654
Mesembryanthemum pallens, photographed by Matthew Fainman
fig. g Matthew Fainman, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 52413727
Mesembryanthemum pallens, photographed by sharndreheuvel
fig. h sharndreheuvel, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 57064297

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 1 botanical country

Regions where Mesembryanthemum pallens is native: Cape Provinces Cape Provinces
Native distribution of Mesembryanthemum pallens, 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
Cape Provinces CPP AFRICA

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 121 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 4.6 °C 7.8 °C 12.2 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 20.4 °C 27.1 °C 32.0 °C
Annual rainfall 267 mm 578 mm 850 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 22 mm 55 mm 81 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 121 research-grade observations of Mesembryanthemum pallens 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 21 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.

  • Mesembryanthemum expansum DC.
  • Mesembryanthemum fastigatum var. pallens Haw.
  • Mesembryanthemum lanceum Thunb.
  • Mesembryanthemum longistylum var. purpurascens DC.
  • Mesembryanthemum loratum Haw.
  • Mesembryanthemum pallens var. album DC.
  • Mesembryanthemum pallens var. roseum DC.
  • Mesembryanthemum pallescens Haw.
  • Mesembryanthemum relaxatum Willd. ex Schweigg.
  • Mesembryanthemum relaxatum Willd.
  • Phyllobolus pallens (Aiton) Bittrich
  • Platythyra pallens (Aiton) L.Bolus
  • Platythyra relaxata (Willd. ex Schweigg.) Schwantes
  • Prenia pallens (Aiton) N.E.Br.
  • Prenia pallens subsp. lancea (Thunb.) Gerbaulet
  • Prenia pallens subsp. lutea (L.Bolus) Gerbaulet
  • Prenia pallens subsp. namaquensis Gerbaulet
  • Prenia pallens subsp. pallens
  • Prenia pallens var. lutea L.Bolus
  • Prenia pallens var. pallens
  • Prenia relaxata (Willd. ex Schweigg.) N.E.Br.

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.