Nama jamaicensisL.

WFO wfo-0000379355 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Nama jamaicensis, photographed by Evelyn Lazzaretti 🏳️‍⚧️
fig. a Evelyn Lazzaretti 🏳️‍⚧️, CC0 1.0 / 2022-03-13 / obs. 182777599

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 28 botanical countries

Regions where Nama jamaicensis is native: Florida, Louisiana, Mexico Central, Mexico Gulf, Mexico Northeast, Mexico Northwest, Mexico Southeast, Mexico Southwest, South Carolina, Texas, Argentina Northeast, Argentina Northwest, Aruba, Bahamas, Belize, Bermuda, Bolivia, Cayman Is., Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Leeward Is., Netherlands Antilles, Puerto Rico, Turks-Caicos Is., Windward Is. FloridaLouisianaMexico CentralMexico GulfMexico NortheastMexico NorthwestMexico SoutheastMexico SouthwestSouth CarolinaTexasArgentina NortheastArgentina NorthwestBelizeBoliviaCubaDominican RepublicHaitiHondurasJamaicaPuerto Rico ArubaBahamasBermudaCayman Is.Leeward Is.Netherlands AntillesTurks-Caicos Is.Windward Is.
Native distribution of Nama jamaicensis, 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
Argentina Northeast AGE SOUTHERN AMERICA
Argentina Northwest AGW
Aruba ARU
Bahamas BAH
Belize BLZ
Bermuda BER
Bolivia BOL
Cayman Is. CAY
Cuba CUB
Dominican Republic DOM
Haiti HAI
Honduras HON
Jamaica JAM
Leeward Is. LEE
Netherlands Antilles NLA
Puerto Rico PUE
Turks-Caicos Is. TCI
Windward Is. WIN
Florida FLA NORTHERN AMERICA
Louisiana LOU
Mexico Central MXC
Mexico Gulf MXG
Mexico Northeast MXE
Mexico Northwest MXN
Mexico Southeast MXT
Mexico Southwest MXS
South Carolina SCA
Texas TEX

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 178 in flower of 190 examined

Proportion of examined Nama jamaicensis in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 9 10 90% 60% to 98%
Feb 22 23 96% 79% to 99%
Mar 45 50 90% 79% to 96%
Apr 52 55 95% 85% to 98%
May 17 18 94% 74% to 99%
Jun 7 7 100% 65% to 100%
Jul 3 3 too few examined
Aug 7 7 100% 65% to 100%
Sep 2 3 too few examined
Oct 5 5 100% 57% to 100%
Nov 2 2 too few examined
Dec 7 7 100% 65% to 100%

Peak flowering in Jun. Each bar is the share of Nama jamaicensis 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. 178 of 190 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 3 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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 1,080 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 5.3 °C 7.0 °C 18.9 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 27.1 °C 34.0 °C 35.9 °C
Annual rainfall 566 mm 858 mm 1,550 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 24 mm 148 mm 207 mm

It is barely found anywhere that freezes. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,080 research-grade observations of Nama jamaicensis 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. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 7 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.

  • Conanthus jamaicensis (L.) A.Heller
  • Hydrolea decurrens Moc. ex Choisy
  • Hydrolea jamaicense Raeusch.
  • Hydrolea jamaicensis (L.) Raeusch.
  • Marilaunidium jamaicense (L.) Kuntze
  • Marilaunidium jamaicensis (L.) Kuntze
  • Nama jamaicensis var. gracilis Brand

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.