Plecostachys serpyllifolia (petite licorice)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Plecostachys serpyllifolia, photographed by linkie — fig. a linkie, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-01 / obs. 195535420

Plecostachys serpyllifolia, photographed by Jared Zachary Herman — fig. b Jared Zachary Herman, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 194270356

Plecostachys serpyllifolia, photographed by Tony Rebelo — fig. c Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 192483902

Plecostachys serpyllifolia, photographed by Di Turner — fig. d Di Turner, CC0 1.0 / obs. 134014827

Plecostachys serpyllifolia, photographed by Shaun Swanepoel — fig. g Shaun Swanepoel, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 112445788

Plecostachys serpyllifolia, photographed by Nicola van Berkel — fig. h Nicola van Berkel, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 105878704

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 3 botanical countries

Native distribution of Plecostachys serpyllifolia, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Cape Provinces	CPP	AFRICA
KwaZulu-Natal	NAT
Mozambique	MOZ

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 681 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	7.9 °C	11.3 °C	13.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	19.7 °C	22.1 °C	25.3 °C
Annual rainfall	358 mm	775 mm	1,687 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	4 mm	80 mm	232 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 681 research-grade observations of Plecostachys serpyllifolia 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 10 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.

Gnaphalium globuliferum E.Mey. ex DC.
Gnaphalium helianthemifolium Burm.f.
Gnaphalium orbiculare Thunb.
Gnaphalium serpyllifolium P.J.Bergius
Gnaphalium serpyllifolium var. serpyllifolium
Helichrysum orbiculare (Thunb.) Druce
Helichrysum serpyllifolium Less.
Helichrysum serpyllifolium Pers.
Helichrysum serpyllifolium var. orbiculare (Thunb.) DC.
Helichrysum serpyllifolium var. serpyllifolium

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.
USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol PLSE7. public domain. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
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.