Pomaria jamesii (James' Caesalpinia)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Pomaria jamesii, photographed by Dominic Gentilcore — fig. a Dominic Gentilcore, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-08-23 / obs. 153238828

Pomaria jamesii, photographed by Eric Knight — fig. c Eric Knight, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 130693377

Pomaria jamesii, photographed by Ethan Wright-Magoon — fig. d Ethan Wright-Magoon, CC0 1.0 / obs. 121717373

Pomaria jamesii, photographed by Cecelia Alexander — fig. e Cecelia Alexander, CC0 1.0 / obs. 72064158

Pomaria jamesii, photographed by crseaquist — fig. f crseaquist, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 152697466

Pomaria jamesii, photographed by Craig Martin — fig. g Craig Martin, CC0 1.0 / obs. 12755207

Pomaria jamesii, photographed by samlutfy — fig. h samlutfy, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 80250720

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 11 botanical countries

Native distribution of Pomaria jamesii, 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
Arizona	ARI	NORTHERN AMERICA
Colorado	COL
Kansas	KAN
Mexico Central	MXC
Mexico Northeast	MXE
Mexico Southeast	MXT
Missouri	MSO
Nebraska	NEB
New Mexico	NWM
Oklahoma	OKL
Texas	TEX

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 192 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	-5.6 °C	-1.9 °C	2.3 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	31.0 °C	32.7 °C	34.4 °C
Annual rainfall	276 mm	405 mm	616 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	31 mm	47 mm	69 mm

It is found where winters bring hard frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 192 research-grade observations of Pomaria jamesii 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 5 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.

Caesalpinia jamesii (Torr. & A.Gray) Fisher
Hoffmannseggia jamesii Torr. & A.Gray
Hoffmannseggia jamesii var. popinoensis Fisher
Larrea jamesii (Torr. & A.Gray) Britton & Rose
Larrea jamesii (Torr. & A.Gray) Britton

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.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. 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.