Pavetta gardeniifoliaHochst. ex A.Rich.

WFO wfo-0000265393 Accepted WFO 2026-06 4 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–d · 2 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 2 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.

Pavetta gardeniifolia, photographed by Hildegard Klein
fig. a Hildegard Klein, CC BY 4.0 / 2020-12-15 / obs. 107486700

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
K000285130
Filed as
Pavetta gardeniifolia var. subtomentosa K.Schum.
Det. by
Bridson, D.
Collected
Miller, O.B. 1961-07-01
Origin
ZW
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 30 botanical countries

Regions where Pavetta gardeniifolia is native: Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burundi, Cameroon, Caprivi Strip, Central African Republic, Chad, Djibouti, DR Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Kenya, KwaZulu-Natal, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Northern Provinces, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan-South Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe AngolaBeninBotswanaBurundiCameroonCaprivi StripCentral African RepublicChadDjiboutiDR CongoEritreaEthiopiaGuineaIvory CoastKenyaKwaZulu-NatalMalawiMaliMozambiqueNamibiaNigeriaNorthern ProvincesRwandaSomaliaSudan-South SudanTanzaniaTogoUgandaZambiaZimbabwe
Native distribution of Pavetta gardeniifolia, 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
Angola ANG AFRICA
Benin BEN
Botswana BOT
Burundi BUR
Cameroon CMN
Caprivi Strip CPV
Central African Republic CAF
Chad CHA
Djibouti DJI
DR Congo ZAI
Eritrea ERI
Ethiopia ETH
Guinea GUI
Ivory Coast IVO
Kenya KEN
KwaZulu-Natal NAT
Malawi MLW
Mali MLI
Mozambique MOZ
Namibia NAM
Nigeria NGA
Northern Provinces TVL
Rwanda RWA
Somalia SOM
Sudan-South Sudan SUD
Tanzania TAN
Togo TOG
Uganda UGA
Zambia ZAM
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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 193 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 2.3 °C 4.8 °C 8.0 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 24.2 °C 26.8 °C 29.9 °C
Annual rainfall 506 mm 721 mm 977 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 8 mm 18 mm 43 mm

It is found where winters are cool but frost is light or absent. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 193 research-grade observations of Pavetta gardeniifolia 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 39 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.

  • Ixora assimilis (Sond.) Kuntze
  • Ixora gardeniifolia (Hochst. ex A.Rich.) Kuntze
  • Pavetta adelensis Delile
  • Pavetta appendiculata De Wild.
  • Pavetta assimilis Sond.
  • Pavetta assimilis var. assimilis
  • Pavetta assimilis var. brevituba-glabra Bremek.
  • Pavetta assimilis var. brevituba-pubescens Bremek.
  • Pavetta assimilis var. glabra Bremek.
  • Pavetta assimilis var. glabra-brevituba Bremek.
  • Pavetta assimilis var. puberula Bremek.
  • Pavetta assimilis var. pubescens Bremek.
  • Pavetta assimilis var. pubescens-brevituba Bremek.
  • Pavetta assimilis var. scabrida Bremek.
  • Pavetta assimilis var. tomentella Bremek.
  • Pavetta fossorum Bremek.
  • Pavetta gardeniifolia var. breviflora Vatke
  • Pavetta gardeniifolia var. laxiflora K.Schum.
  • Pavetta heidelbergensis Bremek.
  • Pavetta hochstetteri Bremek.
  • Pavetta hochstetteri var. glaberrima Bremek.
  • Pavetta hochstetteri var. graciliflora Bremek.
  • Pavetta hochstetteri var. mollirama Bremek.
  • Pavetta krauseana Dinter ex K.Krause

and 15 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.