Myrcia chytraculia(L.) A.R.Lourenço & E.Lucas

pale lidflower

WFO wfo-1000001601 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 3 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 3 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.

Myrcia chytraculia, photographed by Tom Field
fig. a Tom Field, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-02-05 / obs. 112065637
Myrcia chytraculia, photographed by Tom Field
fig. b Tom Field, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 112065657
Myrcia chytraculia, photographed by Jay Horn
fig. c Jay Horn, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 175437790
Myrcia chytraculia, photographed by Tim
fig. d Tim, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 115854561
Myrcia chytraculia, photographed by Jay Horn
fig. e Jay Horn, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 175437804
Myrcia chytraculia, photographed by Tim
fig. f Tim, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 115854590
Myrcia chytraculia, photographed by Jay Horn
fig. g Jay Horn, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 175437814
Myrcia chytraculia, photographed by Tim
fig. h Tim, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 115854605

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
Smithsonian, US National Herbarium
Accession
US 2589956
Filed as
Myrcia chytraculia (L.) A.R.Lourenço & E.Lucas
Det. by
not recorded on this sheet
Collected
H. A. Hespenheide, E. Hespenheide, J. Calver & R. Ricklefs 1965-08-05
Origin
JM
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC0 1.0)

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 24 botanical countries

Regions where Myrcia chytraculia is native: Florida, Mexico Gulf, Mexico Northwest, Mexico Southeast, Mexico Southwest, Bahamas, Belize, Cayman Is., Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Leeward Is., Nicaragua, Panamá, Puerto Rico, Southwest Caribbean, Turks-Caicos Is., Venezuela FloridaMexico GulfMexico NorthwestMexico SoutheastMexico SouthwestBelizeColombiaCosta RicaCubaDominican RepublicEl SalvadorGuatemalaHaitiHondurasJamaicaNicaraguaPanamáPuerto RicoSouthwest CaribbeanVenezuela BahamasCayman Is.Leeward Is.Turks-Caicos Is.
Native distribution of Myrcia chytraculia, 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. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Bahamas BAH SOUTHERN AMERICA
Belize BLZ
Cayman Is. CAY
Colombia CLM
Costa Rica COS
Cuba CUB
Dominican Republic DOM
El Salvador ELS
Guatemala GUA
Haiti HAI
Honduras HON
Jamaica JAM
Leeward Is. LEE
Nicaragua NIC
Panamá PAN
Puerto Rico PUE
Southwest Caribbean SWC
Turks-Caicos Is. TCI
Venezuela VEN
Florida FLA NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Gulf MXG
Mexico Northwest MXN
Mexico Southeast MXT
Mexico Southwest MXS

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 36 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 16.2 °C 20.1 °C 24.4 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 28.0 °C 29.1 °C 31.1 °C
Annual rainfall 1,275 mm 1,456 mm 3,594 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 102 mm 148 mm 700 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 36 research-grade observations of Myrcia chytraculia 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 63 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.

  • Calyptranthes chytraculia (L.) Sw.
  • Calyptranthes chytraculia var. americana McVaugh
  • Calyptranthes chytraculia var. genuina O.Berg
  • Calyptranthes chytraculia var. ovalis O.Berg
  • Calyptranthes chytraculia var. pauciflora O.Berg
  • Calyptranthes chytraculia var. trichotoma O.Berg
  • Calyptranthes chytraculia var. zuzygium (L.) O.Berg
  • Calyptranthes costaricensis O.Berg
  • Calyptranthes euryphylla Standl.
  • Calyptranthes glabrescens Krug & Urb.
  • Calyptranthes izabalana Lundell
  • Calyptranthes lindeniana var. americana (McVaugh) Lundell
  • Calyptranthes mexicana Lundell
  • Calyptranthes millspaughii Urb.
  • Calyptranthes pallens Griseb.
  • Calyptranthes pallens var. mexicana (Lundell) McVaugh
  • Calyptranthes pallens var. williamsii (Standl.) McVaugh
  • Calyptranthes paxillata McVaugh
  • Calyptranthes pendula O.Berg
  • Calyptranthes perlaevigata Lundell
  • Calyptranthes petenensis Lundell
  • Calyptranthes rigida Macfad. ex Griseb.
  • Calyptranthes schiedeana O.Berg
  • Calyptranthes schlechtendaliana O.Berg

and 39 more.

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. USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol CAPA8. public domain. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. 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.