Plate 1 figs. a–h · 5 observations
This species has been photographed under an open licence only 5 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 27 botanical countries
| Region | TDWG code | Continent |
|---|---|---|
| Angola | ANG | AFRICA |
| Benin | BEN | |
| Burkina | BKN | |
| Cabinda | CAB | |
| Cameroon | CMN | |
| Central African Republic | CAF | |
| Chad | CHA | |
| Congo | CON | |
| DR Congo | ZAI | |
| Ethiopia | ETH | |
| Gabon | GAB | |
| Gambia | GAM | |
| Ghana | GHA | |
| Guinea | GUI | |
| Guinea-Bissau | GNB | |
| Gulf of Guinea Is. | GGI | |
| Ivory Coast | IVO | |
| Kenya | KEN | |
| Liberia | LBR | |
| Mali | MLI | |
| Mauritania | MTN | |
| Nigeria | NGA | |
| Senegal | SEN | |
| Sierra Leone | SIE | |
| Sudan-South Sudan | SUD | |
| Togo | TOG | |
| Uganda | UGA |
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 400 observations
| Condition | 5th percentile | Median | 95th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coldest month, mean daily low | 16.2 °C | 19.2 °C | 22.0 °C |
| Warmest month, mean daily high | 29.6 °C | 36.6 °C | 39.7 °C |
| Annual rainfall | 855 mm | 1,146 mm | 2,073 mm |
| Rainfall in the driest quarter | 1 mm | 5 mm | 92 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 400 research-grade observations of Nauclea latifolia 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 9 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.
- Cephalina esculenta (Afzel. ex Sabine) Schumach. & Thonn.
- Nauclea esculenta (Afzel. ex Sabine) Merr.
- Nauclea sambucina T.Winterb.
- Sarcocephalus esculentus Afzel. ex Sabine
- Sarcocephalus esculentus var. amarissima A.Chev.
- Sarcocephalus esculentus var. velutina A.Chev.
- Sarcocephalus latifolius (Sm.) E.A.Bruce
- Sarcocephalus russeggeri Kotschy ex Schweinf.
- Sarcocephalus sambucinus K.Schum.
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.
- 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.