Plate 1 figs. a–d · 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.
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 12 botanical countries
| Region | TDWG code | Continent |
|---|---|---|
| Brazil Northeast | BZE | SOUTHERN AMERICA |
| Brazil Southeast | BZL | |
| Colombia | CLM | |
| Dominican Republic | DOM | |
| Haiti | HAI | |
| Leeward Is. | LEE | |
| Netherlands Antilles | NLA | |
| Puerto Rico | PUE | |
| Trinidad-Tobago | TRT | |
| Venezuela | VEN | |
| Venezuelan Antilles | VNA | |
| Windward Is. | WIN |
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 56 observations
| Condition | 5th percentile | Median | 95th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coldest month, mean daily low | 17.6 °C | 22.1 °C | 24.2 °C |
| Warmest month, mean daily high | 27.8 °C | 30.7 °C | 35.4 °C |
| Annual rainfall | 602 mm | 1,050 mm | 2,344 mm |
| Rainfall in the driest quarter | 8 mm | 69 mm | 374 mm |
It is not found anywhere that gets close to freezing. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 56 research-grade observations of Morisonia hastata 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 Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.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 10 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.
- Capparis coccolobifolia Mart. ex Eichler
- Capparis coccolobifolia f. parvifolia Eichler
- Capparis collina J.R.Johnst.
- Capparis cynophallophora var. latifolia Griseb.
- Capparis flexuosa f. hastata (Jacq.) Dugand
- Capparis hastata Jacq.
- Capparis hastata f. coccolobifolia (Mart. ex Eichler) Dugand & Iltis
- Capparis hastata f. coccolobifolia (Mart. ex Eichler) Iltis & Dugand
- Capparis latifolia (Griseb.) A.Stahl
- Cynophalla hastata (Jacq.) J.Presl
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.
- USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol CAHA9. public domain. 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.