Orbea carnosa(Stent) Bruyns

WFO wfo-0000384585 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 3 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 3 times, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Orbea carnosa, photographed by Manuel R Popp
fig. a Manuel R Popp, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-02-02 / obs. 178022695
Orbea carnosa, photographed by Manuel R Popp
fig. b Manuel R Popp, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 176506883
Orbea carnosa, photographed by Manuel R Popp
fig. c Manuel R Popp, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 176610109
Orbea carnosa, photographed by Manuel R Popp
fig. d Manuel R Popp, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 176506760
Orbea carnosa, photographed by Manuel R Popp
fig. e Manuel R Popp, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 176610143
Orbea carnosa, photographed by Manuel R Popp
fig. f Manuel R Popp, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 176506795
Orbea carnosa, photographed by Manuel R Popp
fig. g Manuel R Popp, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 176610183
Orbea carnosa, photographed by Manuel R Popp
fig. h Manuel R Popp, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 176506839

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
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Accession
K000306150
Filed as
Orbea carnosa (Stent) Bruyns
Det. by
Bruyns,P.V.
Collected
Pole-Evans, I.B. 1913-12-01
Origin
ZA
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 6 botanical countries

Regions where Orbea carnosa is native: Botswana, Eswatini, KwaZulu-Natal, Mozambique, Northern Provinces, Zimbabwe BotswanaEswatiniKwaZulu-NatalMozambiqueNorthern ProvincesZimbabwe
Native distribution of Orbea carnosa, 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
Botswana BOT AFRICA
Eswatini SWZ
KwaZulu-Natal NAT
Mozambique MOZ
Northern Provinces TVL
Zimbabwe ZIM

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.

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.

  • Caralluma carnosa Stent
  • Caralluma fosteri Pillans
  • Caralluma keithii R.A.Dyer
  • Caralluma schweickerdtii Oberm.
  • Pachycymbium carnosum (Stent) L.C.Leach
  • Pachycymbium keithii (R.A.Dyer) L.C.Leach
  • Pachycymbium lancasteri Lavranos

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.