Oenocarpus batauaMart.

WFO wfo-0000254536 Accepted WFO 2026-06 6 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–f · 6 separate observations

Oenocarpus bataua, photographed by Jens-Christian Svenning
fig. a Jens-Christian Svenning, CC BY 4.0 / 2015-07-16 / obs. 74450303
Oenocarpus bataua, photographed by Jens-Christian Svenning
fig. b Jens-Christian Svenning, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 74320483
Oenocarpus bataua, photographed by Jens-Christian Svenning
fig. c Jens-Christian Svenning, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 74321817
Oenocarpus bataua, photographed by Jens-Christian Svenning
fig. d Jens-Christian Svenning, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 73976369
Oenocarpus bataua, photographed by Jens-Christian Svenning
fig. e Jens-Christian Svenning, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 75162949
Oenocarpus bataua, photographed by Jens-Christian Svenning
fig. f Jens-Christian Svenning, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 74497965

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
01137489
Filed as
Oenocarpus bataua Mart.
Det. by
M. J. Balick 1980-01-01
Collected
H. E. Moore 1967-03-17
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 12 botanical countries

Regions where Oenocarpus bataua is native: Bolivia, Brazil North, Brazil West-Central, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Panamá, Peru, Suriname, Trinidad-Tobago, Venezuela BoliviaBrazil NorthBrazil West-CentralColombiaEcuadorFrench GuianaGuyanaPanamáPeruSurinameTrinidad-TobagoVenezuela
Native distribution of Oenocarpus bataua, 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
Bolivia BOL SOUTHERN AMERICA
Brazil North BZN
Brazil West-Central BZC
Colombia CLM
Ecuador ECU
French Guiana FRG
Guyana GUY
Panamá PAN
Peru PER
Suriname SUR
Trinidad-Tobago TRT
Venezuela VEN

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 81 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 16.4 °C 21.9 °C 23.4 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 25.8 °C 30.4 °C 32.2 °C
Annual rainfall 1,991 mm 3,121 mm 4,642 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 161 mm 277 mm 953 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 81 research-grade observations of Oenocarpus bataua 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 12 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.

  • Jessenia bataua (Mart.) Burret
  • Jessenia bataua subsp. bataua
  • Jessenia bataua subsp. oligocarpa (Griseb. & H.Wendl.) Balick
  • Jessenia oligocarpa Griseb. & H.Wendl.
  • Jessenia polycarpa H.Karst.
  • Jessenia repanda Engel
  • Jessenia weberbaueri Burret
  • Oenocarpus bataua var. oligocarpa (Griseb. & H.Wendl.) A.J.Hend.
  • Oenocarpus batawa Wallace
  • Oenocarpus oligocarpa (Griseb. & H.Wendl.) Wess.Boer
  • Oenocarpus oligocarpus (Griseb. & H.Wendl.) Wess.Boer
  • Oenocarpus seje Cuervo Márquez

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. 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.