Neptunia pubescensBenth.

tropical puff

WFO wfo-0000183537 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Neptunia pubescens, photographed by Leila Dasher
fig. a Leila Dasher, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-10 / obs. 196559566

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 23 botanical countries

Regions where Neptunia pubescens is native: Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mexico Northeast, Mexico Southeast, Mexico Southwest, Mississippi, Texas, Argentina Northeast, Argentina Northwest, Brazil South, Brazil West-Central, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Leeward Is., Nicaragua, Panamá, Peru, Uruguay, Windward Is. AlabamaFloridaLouisianaMexico NortheastMexico SoutheastMexico SouthwestMississippiTexasArgentina NortheastArgentina NorthwestBrazil SouthBrazil West-CentralColombiaCosta RicaCubaDominican RepublicHaitiNicaraguaPanamáPeruUruguay Leeward Is.Windward Is.
Native distribution of Neptunia pubescens, 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
Brazil South BZS
Brazil West-Central BZC
Colombia CLM
Costa Rica COS
Cuba CUB
Dominican Republic DOM
Haiti HAI
Leeward Is. LEE
Nicaragua NIC
Panamá PAN
Peru PER
Uruguay URU
Windward Is. WIN
Alabama ALA NORTHERN AMERICA
Florida FLA
Louisiana LOU
Mexico Northeast MXE
Mexico Southeast MXT
Mexico Southwest MXS
Mississippi MSI
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 195 in flower of 218 examined

Proportion of examined Neptunia pubescens in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 2 2 too few examined
Feb 0 0 too few examined
Mar 3 3 too few examined
Apr 21 25 84% 65% to 94%
May 35 36 97% 86% to 100%
Jun 27 31 87% 71% to 95%
Jul 27 28 96% 82% to 99%
Aug 30 34 88% 73% to 95%
Sep 30 32 94% 80% to 98%
Oct 16 20 80% 58% to 92%
Nov 4 5 80% 38% to 96%
Dec 0 2 too few examined

Peak flowering in May. Each bar is the share of Neptunia pubescens 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. 195 of 218 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 4 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 1,485 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 4.1 °C 7.1 °C 16.7 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 29.3 °C 34.0 °C 35.0 °C
Annual rainfall 776 mm 953 mm 1,687 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 88 mm 178 mm 328 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 1,485 research-grade observations of Neptunia pubescens 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.

  • Acacia insularis A.Rich.
  • Neptunia floridana Small
  • Neptunia lindheimeri B.L.Rob.
  • Neptunia mazatlana Britton & Rose
  • Neptunia pubescens var. floridana (Small) B.L.Turner
  • Neptunia pubescens var. lindheimeri (B.L.Rob.) B.L.Turner
  • Neptunia pubescens var. pubescens

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.