Palicourea violacea(Aubl.) A.Rich.

WFO wfo-0000263258 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Palicourea violacea, photographed by Letizia Weichgrebe
fig. a Letizia Weichgrebe, CC BY 4.0 / 2019-04-07 / obs. 55311881
Palicourea violacea, photographed by Neptalí Ramírez Marcial
fig. b Neptalí Ramírez Marcial, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 22423093
Palicourea violacea, photographed by Guillaume Delaitre
fig. c Guillaume Delaitre, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 175066814
Palicourea violacea, photographed by Guillaume Delaitre
fig. d Guillaume Delaitre, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 173892357
Palicourea violacea, photographed by Guillaume Delaitre
fig. e Guillaume Delaitre, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 173894659
Palicourea violacea, photographed by Guillaume Delaitre
fig. f Guillaume Delaitre, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 173892281
Palicourea violacea, photographed by Guillaume Delaitre
fig. g Guillaume Delaitre, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 173632626
Palicourea violacea, photographed by Jason Grant
fig. h Jason Grant, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 6765130

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 24 botanical countries

Regions where Palicourea violacea is native: Mexico Gulf, Mexico Southeast, Mexico Southwest, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil North, Brazil Northeast, Brazil Southeast, Brazil West-Central, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panamá, Peru, Suriname, Trinidad-Tobago, Venezuela, Windward Is. Mexico GulfMexico SoutheastMexico SouthwestBelizeBoliviaBrazil NorthBrazil NortheastBrazil SoutheastBrazil West-CentralColombiaCosta RicaEcuadorFrench GuianaGuatemalaGuyanaHondurasJamaicaNicaraguaPanamáPeruSurinameTrinidad-TobagoVenezuela Windward Is.
Native distribution of Palicourea violacea, 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
Belize BLZ SOUTHERN AMERICA
Bolivia BOL
Brazil North BZN
Brazil Northeast BZE
Brazil Southeast BZL
Brazil West-Central BZC
Colombia CLM
Costa Rica COS
Ecuador ECU
French Guiana FRG
Guatemala GUA
Guyana GUY
Honduras HON
Jamaica JAM
Nicaragua NIC
Panamá PAN
Peru PER
Suriname SUR
Trinidad-Tobago TRT
Venezuela VEN
Windward Is. WIN
Mexico Gulf MXG NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Southeast MXT
Mexico Southwest MXS

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 46 in flower of 86 examined

Peak flowering in Dec. Each bar is the share of Palicourea violacea 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. 46 of 86 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 5 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 168 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 19.0 °C 22.2 °C 23.4 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 26.1 °C 30.0 °C 31.7 °C
Annual rainfall 1,977 mm 3,337 mm 5,076 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 102 mm 261 mm 402 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 168 research-grade observations of Palicourea violacea 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 35 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.

  • Cephaelis peruviana Spreng.
  • Declieuxia roraimensis Wernham
  • Geocardia violacea (Aubl.) Standl.
  • Naletonia violacea (Aubl.) Bremek.
  • Nonatelia violacea Aubl.
  • Oribasia violacea (Aubl.) J.F.Gmel.
  • Palicourea capitata (Ruiz & Pav.) Borhidi
  • Palicourea stevensonii Standl.
  • Psychotria albonervia Standl.
  • Psychotria amplifolia Raeusch.
  • Psychotria arcuata Benth.
  • Psychotria caerulea Forsyth f.
  • Psychotria capitata Ruiz & Pav.
  • Psychotria capitata f. tomentosa Steyerm.
  • Psychotria capitata f. trichophora Steyerm.
  • Psychotria capitata subsp. amplifolia Steyerm.
  • Psychotria capitata subsp. fissistipularis Dwyer
  • Psychotria capitata subsp. inundata (Benth.) Steyerm.
  • Psychotria capitata subsp. rubra Dwyer
  • Psychotria capitata var. roraimensis (Wernham) Steyerm.
  • Psychotria capitata var. septentrionalis Steyerm.
  • Psychotria chlorotica Müll.Arg.
  • Psychotria chlorotica var. bahiensis Müll.Arg.
  • Psychotria chlorotica var. lanceolata Müll.Arg.

and 11 more.

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.