Neonotonia wightii(Wight & Arn.) J.A.Lackey

Perennial Soybeanperennial soybean

WFO wfo-0000184360 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Neonotonia wightii, photographed by Greg Tasney
fig. a Greg Tasney, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-06-09 / obs. 204577750

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
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
1144853
Filed as
Neonotonia wightii (Wight & Arn.) J.A.Lackey
Det. by
L. P. de Queiroz 2006-01-01
Collected
D. B. O. S. Cardoso 2005-09-21
Origin
BR
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

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 35 botanical countries

Regions where Neonotonia wightii is native: Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, DR Congo, Eritrea, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Gulf of Guinea Is., Ivory Coast, Kenya, KwaZulu-Natal, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Northern Provinces, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Sudan-South Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Yemen, India, Sri Lanka AngolaBeninBotswanaBurundiCameroonCentral African RepublicChadDR CongoEritreaEswatiniEthiopiaGabonGhanaGuineaGulf of Guinea Is.Ivory CoastKenyaKwaZulu-NatalLiberiaMalawiMozambiqueNamibiaNigeriaNorthern ProvincesRwandaSierra LeoneSudan-South SudanTanzaniaTogoUgandaZambiaZimbabweYemenIndiaSri Lanka
Native distribution of Neonotonia wightii, 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.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Angola ANG AFRICA
Benin BEN
Botswana BOT
Burundi BUR
Cameroon CMN
Central African Republic CAF
Chad CHA
DR Congo ZAI
Eritrea ERI
Eswatini SWZ
Ethiopia ETH
Gabon GAB
Ghana GHA
Guinea GUI
Gulf of Guinea Is. GGI
Ivory Coast IVO
Kenya KEN
KwaZulu-Natal NAT
Liberia LBR
Malawi MLW
Mozambique MOZ
Namibia NAM
Nigeria NGA
Northern Provinces TVL
Rwanda RWA
Sierra Leone SIE
Sudan-South Sudan SUD
Tanzania TAN
Togo TOG
Uganda UGA
Zambia ZAM
Zimbabwe ZIM
India IND ASIA-TROPICAL
Sri Lanka SRL
Yemen YEM ASIA-TEMPERATE

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 56 in flower of 79 examined

Proportion of examined Neonotonia wightii in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 4 4 too few examined
Feb 2 2 too few examined
Mar 3 3 too few examined
Apr 2 9 22% 6% to 55%
May 1 5 20% 4% to 62%
Jun 12 15 80% 55% to 93%
Jul 15 16 94% 72% to 99%
Aug 6 7 86% 49% to 97%
Sep 3 3 too few examined
Oct 1 3 too few examined
Nov 1 3 too few examined
Dec 6 9 67% 35% to 88%

Peak flowering in Jul. Each bar is the share of Neonotonia wightii 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. 56 of 79 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 6 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 673 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 6.3 °C 11.3 °C 21.0 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 24.8 °C 28.0 °C 30.2 °C
Annual rainfall 720 mm 1,067 mm 2,639 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 25 mm 118 mm 395 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 673 research-grade observations of Neonotonia wightii 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 34 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.

  • Glycine albidiflora De Wild.
  • Glycine bujacia Benth.
  • Glycine bujasia Benth.
  • Glycine claessensii De Wild.
  • Glycine javanica subsp. micrantha (Hochst. ex A.Rich.) F.J.Herm.
  • Glycine javanica subsp. pseudojavanica (Taub.) Hauman
  • Glycine javanica var. claessensii (De Wild.) Hauman
  • Glycine javanica var. laurentii (De Wild.) Hauman
  • Glycine javanica var. longicauda (Schweinf.) Baker
  • Glycine javanica var. mearnsii (De Wild.) Hauman
  • Glycine javanica var. moniliformis (Hochst. ex A.Rich.) F.J.Herm.
  • Glycine javanica var. paniculata Hauman
  • Glycine laurentii De Wild.
  • Glycine longicauda Schweinf.
  • Glycine mearnsii De Wild.
  • Glycine micrantha Hochst. ex A.Rich.
  • Glycine moniliformis Hochst. ex A.Rich.
  • Glycine petitiana (A.Rich.) Schweinf.
  • Glycine petitiana subsp. dembianensis Chiov.
  • Glycine pseudojavanica Taub.
  • Glycine roosevelti De Wild.
  • Glycine wightii (Wight & Arn.) Verdc.
  • Glycine wightii subsp. petitiana (A.Rich.) Verdc.
  • Glycine wightii subsp. pseudojavanica (Taub.) Verdc.

and 10 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. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. 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.