Monstera obliquaMiq.

WFO wfo-0000245791 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 4 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 4 times, 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.

Monstera obliqua, photographed by Daniel Mesa
fig. a Daniel Mesa, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-11 / obs. 205279883
Monstera obliqua, photographed by Callan Bird
fig. b Callan Bird, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 36406667
Monstera obliqua, photographed by Vincent A. Vos
fig. c Vincent A. Vos, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 103757462
Monstera obliqua, photographed by Vincent A. Vos
fig. d Vincent A. Vos, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 103757469
Monstera obliqua, photographed by Vincent A. Vos
fig. e Vincent A. Vos, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 103757459
Monstera obliqua, photographed by Vincent A. Vos
fig. f Vincent A. Vos, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 68484695
Monstera obliqua, photographed by Daniel Mesa
fig. g Daniel Mesa, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205279914
Monstera obliqua, photographed by Vincent A. Vos
fig. h Vincent A. Vos, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 68484747

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 14 botanical countries

Regions where Monstera obliqua is native: Bolivia, Brazil North, Brazil Northeast, Brazil West-Central, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Panamá, Peru, Suriname, Trinidad-Tobago, Venezuela BoliviaBrazil NorthBrazil NortheastBrazil West-CentralColombiaCosta RicaEcuadorFrench GuianaGuyanaPanamáPeruSurinameTrinidad-TobagoVenezuela
Native distribution of Monstera obliqua, 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
Bolivia BOL SOUTHERN AMERICA
Brazil North BZN
Brazil Northeast BZE
Brazil West-Central BZC
Colombia CLM
Costa Rica COS
Ecuador ECU
French Guiana FRG
Guyana GUY
Panamá PAN
Peru PER
Suriname SUR
Trinidad-Tobago TRT
Venezuela VEN

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.

Flowering 31 in flower of 98 examined

Peak flowering in Aug. Each bar is the share of Monstera obliqua observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 31 of 98 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 2 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 11 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.

  • Heteropsis obliqua Miq. ex Engl.
  • Monstera expilata Schott
  • Monstera falcifolia Engl.
  • Monstera falcifolia var. latifolia K.Krause
  • Monstera fendleri Engl.
  • Monstera killipii K.Krause
  • Monstera microstachys Schott
  • Monstera obliqua var. expilata (Schott) Engl.
  • Monstera sagotiana Engl.
  • Monstera snethlagei K.Krause
  • Monstera unilatera Rusby

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.