Orontium aquaticumL.

goldenclub

WFO wfo-0000261011 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Orontium aquaticum, photographed by Kathy Richardson
fig. a Kathy Richardson, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-15 / obs. 197935397
Orontium aquaticum, photographed by Kathy Richardson
fig. b Kathy Richardson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 191407837
Orontium aquaticum, photographed by Ryan Watson
fig. c Ryan Watson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 186292422
Orontium aquaticum, photographed by Michelle W. （鍾偉瑋）
fig. d Michelle W. （鍾偉瑋）, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 186363444
Orontium aquaticum, photographed by Ryan Watson
fig. e Ryan Watson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 185414425
Orontium aquaticum, photographed by Ann Redmond
fig. f Ann Redmond, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 183788241
Orontium aquaticum, photographed by Samuel A Schmid, PhD, PWS
fig. g Samuel A Schmid, PhD, PWS, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 182623046
Orontium aquaticum, photographed by Jody Shugart
fig. h Jody Shugart, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 182380152

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 21 botanical countries

Regions where Orontium aquaticum is native: Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode I., South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia AlabamaConnecticutFloridaGeorgiaKentuckyLouisianaMarylandMassachusettsMississippiNew JerseyNew YorkNorth CarolinaPennsylvaniaSouth CarolinaTennesseeTexasVirginiaWest Virginia DelawareDistrict of ColumbiaRhode I.
Native distribution of Orontium aquaticum, 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
Alabama ALA NORTHERN AMERICA
Connecticut CNT
Delaware DEL
District of Columbia WDC
Florida FLA
Georgia GEO
Kentucky KTY
Louisiana LOU
Maryland MRY
Massachusetts MAS
Mississippi MSI
New Jersey NWJ
New York NWY
North Carolina NCA
Pennsylvania PEN
Rhode I. RHO
South Carolina SCA
Tennessee TEN
Texas TEX
Virginia VRG
West Virginia WVA

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 304 in flower of 400 examined

Peak flowering in Mar. Each bar is the share of Orontium aquaticum 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. 304 of 400 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. One month has fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for it. 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 2,002 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -5.5 °C 3.0 °C 10.8 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 25.8 °C 31.1 °C 32.6 °C
Annual rainfall 1,084 mm 1,307 mm 1,778 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 191 mm 266 mm 366 mm

It is found where winters bring hard frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 2,002 research-grade observations of Orontium aquaticum 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.

  • Amidena undulata Raf.
  • Aronia aquatica (L.) Baill.
  • Orontium angustifolium Raf.
  • Orontium aquaticum f. natans Glück
  • Orontium aquaticum f. terrestre Glück
  • Orontium vaginatum Raf.
  • Pothos ovatus Walter

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.