Phytolacca thyrsifloraFenzl ex J.A.Schmidt

WFO wfo-0000481943 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Phytolacca thyrsiflora, photographed by Fernando Sessegolo
fig. a Fernando Sessegolo, CC0 1.0 / 2022-04-02 / obs. 185869110

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 16 botanical countries

Regions where Phytolacca thyrsiflora is native: Argentina Northeast, Brazil North, Brazil Northeast, Brazil South, Brazil Southeast, Brazil West-Central, Colombia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Paraguay, Peru, Venezuela Argentina NortheastBrazil NorthBrazil NortheastBrazil SouthBrazil SoutheastBrazil West-CentralColombiaDominican RepublicEl SalvadorFrench GuianaGuatemalaGuyanaHaitiParaguayPeruVenezuela
Native distribution of Phytolacca thyrsiflora, 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
Argentina Northeast AGE SOUTHERN AMERICA
Brazil North BZN
Brazil Northeast BZE
Brazil South BZS
Brazil Southeast BZL
Brazil West-Central BZC
Colombia CLM
Dominican Republic DOM
El Salvador ELS
French Guiana FRG
Guatemala GUA
Guyana GUY
Haiti HAI
Paraguay PAR
Peru PER
Venezuela VEN

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 39 in flower of 54 examined

Proportion of examined Phytolacca thyrsiflora in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 2 4 too few examined
Feb 1 2 too few examined
Mar 2 2 too few examined
Apr 6 8 75% 41% to 93%
May 7 10 70% 40% to 89%
Jun 2 3 too few examined
Jul 4 4 too few examined
Aug 3 3 too few examined
Sep 2 2 too few examined
Oct 2 5 40% 12% to 77%
Nov 4 6 67% 30% to 90%
Dec 4 5 80% 38% to 96%

Peak flowering in Dec. Each bar is the share of Phytolacca thyrsiflora 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. 39 of 54 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 7 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 211 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 6.8 °C 10.6 °C 22.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 21.3 °C 26.1 °C 29.5 °C
Annual rainfall 1,347 mm 1,838 mm 2,736 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 51 mm 220 mm 402 mm

It is barely found anywhere that freezes. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 211 research-grade observations of Phytolacca thyrsiflora 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.

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.