Neltuma chilensis (algarrobo)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Neltuma chilensis, photographed by Bob Miller — fig. a Bob Miller, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-03-19 / obs. 183618994

Neltuma chilensis, photographed by Nicolas Olejnik — fig. b Nicolas Olejnik, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 1989000

Neltuma chilensis, photographed by Tomás Carranza Perales — fig. c Tomás Carranza Perales, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 179272952

Neltuma chilensis, photographed by mgentile — fig. d mgentile, CC0 1.0 / obs. 170425893

Neltuma chilensis, photographed by CK2AZ — fig. e CK2AZ, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 117567163

Neltuma chilensis, photographed by Rod — fig. f Rod, CC0 1.0 / obs. 62680767

Neltuma chilensis, photographed by Alfredo F. Fuentes Claros — fig. g Alfredo F. Fuentes Claros, CC0 1.0 / obs. 58412116

Neltuma chilensis, photographed by Leonel Roget — fig. h Leonel Roget, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 54579245

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 6 botanical countries

Native distribution of Neltuma chilensis, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Argentina Northeast	AGE	SOUTHERN AMERICA
Argentina Northwest	AGW
Bolivia	BOL
Chile Central	CLC
Chile North	CLN
Peru	PER

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 260 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	2.2 °C	5.2 °C	10.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	24.0 °C	29.4 °C	41.2 °C
Annual rainfall	89 mm	350 mm	1,334 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	4 mm	9 mm	52 mm

It is found where winters are cool but frost is light or absent. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 260 research-grade observations of Neltuma chilensis 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.

Acacia siliquastrum Cav. ex Lag.
Ceratonia chilensis Molina
Mimosa siliquastrum Cav.
Prosopis chilensis (Molina) Stuntz
Prosopis chilensis var. catamarcana Burkart
Prosopis chilensis var. chilensis
Prosopis chilensis var. riojana Burkart
Prosopis schinopoma Stuck.
Prosopis siliquastrum (Cav. ex Lag.) DC.
Prosopis siliquosa St.-Lag.

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 PRCH2. 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.