Nekemias cantoniensis

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Nekemias cantoniensis, photographed by Agnes Trekker — fig. b Agnes Trekker, CC0 1.0 / obs. 154661762

Nekemias cantoniensis, photographed by Jacy Chen — fig. c Jacy Chen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 112424632

Nekemias cantoniensis, photographed by owl — fig. e owl, CC0 1.0 / obs. 68841933

Nekemias cantoniensis, photographed by Cheng-Tao Lin — fig. g Cheng-Tao Lin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 21775940

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 3708241
Filed as: Nekemias cantoniensis (Hook. & Arn.) J.Wen & Z.L.Nie
Det. by: not recorded on this sheet
Collected: J. Wen 2016-07-20
Origin: CN
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 14 botanical countries

Native distribution of Nekemias cantoniensis, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
China South-Central	CHC	ASIA-TEMPERATE
China Southeast	CHS
Hainan	CHH
Japan	JAP
Nansei-shoto	NNS
Taiwan	TAI
Tibet	CHT
Cambodia	CBD	ASIA-TROPICAL
Jawa	JAW
Laos	LAO
Malaya	MLY
Myanmar	MYA
Thailand	THA
Vietnam	VIE

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 846 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	7.5 °C	11.8 °C	13.9 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	26.8 °C	29.1 °C	30.9 °C
Annual rainfall	2,191 mm	3,607 mm	4,862 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	122 mm	602 mm	845 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 846 research-grade observations of Nekemias cantoniensis 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 16 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.

Ampelopsis annamensis Gagnep.
Ampelopsis cantoniensis (Hook. & Arn.) Planch.
Ampelopsis cantoniensis (Hook. & Arn.) K.Koch
Ampelopsis cantoniensis var. harmandii Planch.
Ampelopsis cantoniensis var. lecoides (Maxim.) F.Y.Lu
Ampelopsis hypoglauca (Hance) C.L.Li
Ampelopsis leeoides (Maxim.) Planch.
Ampelopsis loureiroi Planch.
Cissus cantoniensis Hook. & Arn.
Cissus diversifolia Walp.
Hedera hypoglauca Hance
Leea theifera H.Lév.
Nekemias hypoglauca (Hance) J.Wen & Z.L.Nie
Vitis cantoniensis (Hook. & Arn.) Seem.
Vitis leeoides Maxim.
Vitis multijugata H.Lév. & Vaniot

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.