Moringa oleifera (horseradishtree)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Moringa oleifera, photographed by Robin White — fig. a Robin White, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-08 / obs. 204404319

Moringa oleifera, photographed by Ricard Busquets Reverte — fig. b Ricard Busquets Reverte, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199982007

Moringa oleifera, photographed by Alan Weakley — fig. c Alan Weakley, CC0 1.0 / obs. 194676112

Moringa oleifera, photographed by stinger — fig. d stinger, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 186733957

Moringa oleifera, photographed by JCorven — fig. e JCorven, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 180117683

Moringa oleifera, photographed by Karim Haddad — fig. f Karim Haddad, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 178348709

Moringa oleifera, photographed by Destino Trail — fig. g Destino Trail, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 170050889

Moringa oleifera, photographed by Shriya Uday — fig. h Shriya Uday, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 163936543

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

Native distribution of Moringa oleifera, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
India	IND	ASIA-TROPICAL
Pakistan	PAK

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 158 in flower of 237 examined

81%

93%

83%

43%

63%

58%

36%

30%

67%

42%

82%

88%

Proportion of examined Moringa oleifera in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	26	32	81%	65% to 91%
Feb	28	30	93%	79% to 98%
Mar	24	29	83%	65% to 92%
Apr	15	35	43%	28% to 59%
May	10	16	63%	39% to 82%
Jun	7	12	58%	32% to 81%
Jul	5	14	36%	16% to 61%
Aug	3	10	30%	11% to 60%
Sep	8	12	67%	39% to 86%
Oct	8	19	42%	23% to 64%
Nov	9	11	82%	52% to 95%
Dec	15	17	88%	66% to 97%

Peak flowering in Feb. Each bar is the share of Moringa oleifera 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. 158 of 237 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 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 18 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.

Anoma moringa (L.) Lour.
Guilandina moringa L.
Hyperanthera decandra Willd.
Hyperanthera moringa (L.) Vahl
Hyperanthera pterygosperma (Gaertn.) Oken
Moringa amara Durin
Moringa domestica Buch.-Ham.
Moringa edulis Medik.
Moringa erecta Salisb.
Moringa moringa (L.) Millsp.
Moringa nux-eben Desf.
Moringa octogona Stokes
Moringa parvifolia Noronha
Moringa polygona DC.
Moringa pterygosperma Gaertn.
Moringa robusta Bojer
Moringa sylvestris Buch.-Ham.
Moringa zeylanica Pers.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
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.