Plate 1 figs. a–g · 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.
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
| Region | TDWG code | Continent |
|---|---|---|
| Belize | BLZ | SOUTHERN AMERICA |
| Bolivia | BOL | |
| Brazil North | BZN | |
| Brazil Northeast | BZE | |
| Brazil Southeast | BZL | |
| Brazil West-Central | BZC | |
| Colombia | CLM | |
| Costa Rica | COS | |
| Cuba | CUB | |
| Ecuador | ECU | |
| French Guiana | FRG | |
| Guyana | GUY | |
| Honduras | HON | |
| Nicaragua | NIC | |
| Panamá | PAN | |
| Peru | PER | |
| Suriname | SUR | |
| Trinidad-Tobago | TRT | |
| Venezuela | VEN | |
| Mexico Gulf | MXG | NORTHERN AMERICA |
| Mexico Southeast | MXT |
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 124 observations
| Condition | 5th percentile | Median | 95th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coldest month, mean daily low | 15.5 °C | 21.9 °C | 24.0 °C |
| Warmest month, mean daily high | 25.5 °C | 30.6 °C | 32.7 °C |
| Annual rainfall | 1,531 mm | 3,157 mm | 4,512 mm |
| Rainfall in the driest quarter | 96 mm | 262 mm | 778 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 124 research-grade observations of Paepalanthus fluviatilis 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 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.
- Eriocaulon amplexicaule Rottb.
- Eriocaulon sphagnoides Poepp. ex Körn.
- Hyphydra amplexicaulis (Rottb.) Vahl
- Hyphydra fluviatilis (Aubl.) Schreb. ex Forsyth f.
- Tonina fluviatilis Aubl.
- Tonina fluviatilis f. obtusifolia Moldenke
- Tonina fluviatilis f. parvifolia Moldenke
Sourcesevery claim on this page
- World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
- iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
- 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.