Plectranthus fruticosusL'Hér.

WFO wfo-0000275435 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Plectranthus fruticosus, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. a Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-05-20 / obs. 202496427
Plectranthus fruticosus, photographed by Di Turner
fig. b Di Turner, CC0 1.0 / obs. 194976462
Plectranthus fruticosus, photographed by Di Turner
fig. c Di Turner, CC0 1.0 / obs. 194982798
Plectranthus fruticosus, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. d Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 182969629
Plectranthus fruticosus, photographed by Di Turner
fig. e Di Turner, CC0 1.0 / obs. 166119368
Plectranthus fruticosus, photographed by Di Turner
fig. f Di Turner, CC0 1.0 / obs. 166078686
Plectranthus fruticosus, photographed by Di Turner
fig. g Di Turner, CC0 1.0 / obs. 126658786
Plectranthus fruticosus, photographed by Di Turner
fig. h Di Turner, CC0 1.0 / obs. 126624977

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 5 botanical countries

Regions where Plectranthus fruticosus is native: Cape Provinces, Eswatini, KwaZulu-Natal, Mozambique, Northern Provinces Cape ProvincesEswatiniKwaZulu-NatalMozambiqueNorthern Provinces
Native distribution of Plectranthus fruticosus, 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
Cape Provinces CPP AFRICA
Eswatini SWZ
KwaZulu-Natal NAT
Mozambique MOZ
Northern Provinces TVL

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 105 in flower of 116 examined

Peak flowering in Feb. Each bar is the share of Plectranthus fruticosus 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. 105 of 116 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 4 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.

Also published as 7 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.

  • Germanea urticifolia Lam.
  • Plectranthus arthropodus Briq.
  • Plectranthus behrii Compton
  • Plectranthus charianthus Briq.
  • Plectranthus galpinii Schltr.
  • Plectranthus peglerae T.Cooke
  • Plectranthus urticifolius (Lam.) Salisb.

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.