Peperomia hernandiifolia(Vahl) A.Dietr.

West Indian peperomia

WFO wfo-0000478454 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Peperomia hernandiifolia, photographed by Jake Rehage
fig. a Jake Rehage, CC0 1.0 / 2021-07-24 / obs. 146843638

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 20 botanical countries

Regions where Peperomia hernandiifolia is native: Brazil North, Brazil Northeast, Brazil South, Brazil Southeast, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Leeward Is., Nicaragua, Panamá, Peru, Puerto Rico, Trinidad-Tobago, Venezuela, Windward Is. Brazil NorthBrazil NortheastBrazil SouthBrazil SoutheastColombiaCosta RicaCubaDominican RepublicGuyanaHaitiHondurasJamaicaNicaraguaPanamáPeruPuerto RicoTrinidad-TobagoVenezuela Leeward Is.Windward Is.
Native distribution of Peperomia hernandiifolia, 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
Brazil North BZN SOUTHERN AMERICA
Brazil Northeast BZE
Brazil South BZS
Brazil Southeast BZL
Colombia CLM
Costa Rica COS
Cuba CUB
Dominican Republic DOM
Guyana GUY
Haiti HAI
Honduras HON
Jamaica JAM
Leeward Is. LEE
Nicaragua NIC
Panamá PAN
Peru PER
Puerto Rico PUE
Trinidad-Tobago TRT
Venezuela VEN
Windward Is. WIN

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 232 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 11.8 °C 13.6 °C 19.3 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 20.1 °C 24.4 °C 27.0 °C
Annual rainfall 2,113 mm 3,279 mm 4,296 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 201 mm 231 mm 514 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 232 research-grade observations of Peperomia hernandiifolia 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 9 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.

  • Peperomia choroniana var. puberulenta Yunck.
  • Peperomia ciliifera Trel.
  • Peperomia ciliifera var. filipes (Trel.) Trel.
  • Peperomia conserta Yunck.
  • Peperomia hernandiifolia var. calva Trel.
  • Peperomia hernandiifolia var. ciliifera Trel.
  • Peperomia hernandiifolia var. filipes Trel.
  • Peperomia ponthieui Miq.
  • Piper hernandiifolium Vahl

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.