Morettia canescensBoiss.

WFO wfo-0000369726 Accepted WFO 2026-06 5 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–e · 2 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 2 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.

Morettia canescens, photographed by Olivier Argagnon
fig. a Olivier Argagnon, CC BY 4.0 / 2019-03-30 / obs. 177273196
Morettia canescens, photographed by Rafael Medina
fig. b Rafael Medina, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 2047673
Morettia canescens, photographed by Olivier Argagnon
fig. c Olivier Argagnon, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 177273212
Morettia canescens, photographed by Olivier Argagnon
fig. d Olivier Argagnon, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 177273217
Morettia canescens, photographed by Olivier Argagnon
fig. e Olivier Argagnon, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 177273219

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
K000230656
Filed as
Morettia canescens Boiss.
Det. by
Al-Shehbaz
Collected
Schimper, W. 1825-04-26
Origin
EG
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 14 botanical countries

Regions where Morettia canescens is native: Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Sudan-South Sudan, Tunisia, Western Sahara, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Sinai AlgeriaChadEgyptLibyaMaliMauritaniaMoroccoNigerSudan-South SudanTunisiaWestern SaharaPalestineSaudi ArabiaSinai
Native distribution of Morettia canescens, 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
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Chad CHA
Egypt EGY
Libya LBY
Mali MLI
Mauritania MTN
Morocco MOR
Niger NGR
Sudan-South Sudan SUD
Tunisia TUN
Western Sahara WSA
Palestine PAL ASIA-TEMPERATE
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 64 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 0.6 °C 2.7 °C 7.2 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 35.2 °C 38.2 °C 40.7 °C
Annual rainfall 28 mm 105 mm 173 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 0 mm 12 mm 24 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 64 research-grade observations of Morettia canescens 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 3 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.

  • Morettia canescens var. canescens
  • Morettia nakkebiana Hochst. ex Coss.
  • Morettia ubachi Pau

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.