Pochota fendleri

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Pochota fendleri, photographed by Lena Struwe — fig. b Lena Struwe, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 1916870

Pochota fendleri, photographed by keesgroenendijk — fig. f keesgroenendijk, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 170470455

Pochota fendleri, photographed by Eduardo Chacón Madrigal — fig. g Eduardo Chacón Madrigal, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 111389217

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 9 botanical countries

Native distribution of Pochota fendleri, 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
Belize	BLZ	SOUTHERN AMERICA
Brazil North	BZN
Colombia	CLM
Costa Rica	COS
El Salvador	ELS
Honduras	HON
Nicaragua	NIC
Panamá	PAN
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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 164 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	19.4 °C	23.8 °C	25.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	27.7 °C	30.2 °C	34.7 °C
Annual rainfall	1,373 mm	2,418 mm	3,920 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	10 mm	68 mm	271 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 164 research-grade observations of Pochota fendleri 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 Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.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 8 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.

Bombacopsis fendleri (Seem.) Pittier
Bombacopsis jaris Pittier
Bombacopsis sepium Pittier
Bombax fendleri (Seem.) Benth. ex B.D.Jacks.
Bombax nicoyense Pittier
Pachira bracteolata Decne.
Pachira fendleri Seem.
Pochota vulgaris Ram.Goyena

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.
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.