Pombalia glabra(Dowell) Paula-Souza

western greenviolet

WFO wfo-0001340922 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Pombalia glabra, photographed by alejandrozab
fig. a alejandrozab, CC BY 4.0 / 2018-07-14 / obs. 47018368

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.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
2593507
Filed as
Hybanthus attenuatus (Humb. & Bonpl. ex Willd.) Schulze-Menz
Det. by
not recorded on this sheet
Collected
not recorded
Origin
not recorded
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 21 botanical countries

Regions where Pombalia glabra is native: Arizona, Mexico Central, Mexico Gulf, Mexico Northeast, Mexico Northwest, Mexico Southeast, Mexico Southwest, Belize, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Netherlands Antilles, Nicaragua, Panamá, Peru, Venezuela, Venezuelan Antilles ArizonaMexico CentralMexico GulfMexico NortheastMexico NorthwestMexico SoutheastMexico SouthwestBelizeBoliviaColombiaCosta RicaEcuadorEl SalvadorGuatemalaHondurasNicaraguaPanamáPeruVenezuela Netherlands AntillesVenezuelan Antilles
Native distribution of Pombalia glabra, 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. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Belize BLZ SOUTHERN AMERICA
Bolivia BOL
Colombia CLM
Costa Rica COS
Ecuador ECU
El Salvador ELS
Guatemala GUA
Honduras HON
Netherlands Antilles NLA
Nicaragua NIC
Panamá PAN
Peru PER
Venezuela VEN
Venezuelan Antilles VNA
Arizona ARI NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Central MXC
Mexico Gulf MXG
Mexico Northeast MXE
Mexico Northwest MXN
Mexico Southeast MXT
Mexico Southwest MXS

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 169 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 6.8 °C 12.1 °C 21.2 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 22.3 °C 30.0 °C 35.7 °C
Annual rainfall 529 mm 961 mm 2,616 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 7 mm 25 mm 191 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 169 research-grade observations of Pombalia glabra 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 18 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.

  • Calceolaria botterii (Turcz.) Kuntze
  • Calceolaria elata (Turcz.) Kuntze
  • Calceolaria glabra Dowell
  • Calceolaria mocinoana Kuntze
  • Calceolaria riparia (Kunth) Kuntze
  • Calceolaria riparia var. houstonii (DC.) Dowell
  • Hybanthus attenuatus (Humb. & Bonpl. ex Willd.) Schulze-Menz
  • Hybanthus elatus (Turcz.) C.V.Morton
  • Hybanthus glaber (Dowell) Standl.
  • Ionidium attenuatum Humb. & Bonpl. ex Schult.
  • Ionidium botterii Turcz.
  • Ionidium elatum Turcz.
  • Ionidium parietariifolium DC.
  • Ionidium riparium Kunth
  • Ionidium riparium A.Gray
  • Ionidium riparium var. aestivum A.Gray
  • Mercurialis glabra M.E.Jones
  • Pombalia attenuata (Humb. & Bonpl. ex Willd.) Paula-Souza

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. USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol HYAT. public domain. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. 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.