Prestonia quinquangularis(Jacq.) Spreng.

WFO wfo-0000283110 Accepted WFO 2026-06 7 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–g · 4 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 4 times, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Prestonia quinquangularis, photographed by Kozue Kawakami
fig. a Kozue Kawakami, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-03-26 / obs. 185534339

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
01075617
Filed as
Prestonia quinquangularis (Jacq.) Spreng.
Det. by
B. F. Hansen 2005-01-01
Collected
L. G. Lohmann 2001-04-30
Origin
BR
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 Prestonia quinquangularis is native: Argentina Northeast, Argentina Northwest, Bolivia, Brazil North, Brazil Northeast, Brazil South, Brazil Southeast, Brazil West-Central, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guyana, Leeward Is., Nicaragua, Panamá, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Trinidad-Tobago, Venezuela, Windward Is. Argentina NortheastArgentina NorthwestBoliviaBrazil NorthBrazil NortheastBrazil SouthBrazil SoutheastBrazil West-CentralColombiaCosta RicaEcuadorGuyanaNicaraguaPanamáParaguayPeruSurinameTrinidad-TobagoVenezuela Leeward Is.Windward Is.
Native distribution of Prestonia quinquangularis, 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
Argentina Northeast AGE SOUTHERN AMERICA
Argentina Northwest AGW
Bolivia BOL
Brazil North BZN
Brazil Northeast BZE
Brazil South BZS
Brazil Southeast BZL
Brazil West-Central BZC
Colombia CLM
Costa Rica COS
Ecuador ECU
Guyana GUY
Leeward Is. LEE
Nicaragua NIC
Panamá PAN
Paraguay PAR
Peru PER
Suriname SUR
Trinidad-Tobago TRT
Venezuela VEN
Windward Is. WIN

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 73 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 13.5 °C 21.4 °C 24.5 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 23.5 °C 30.1 °C 32.7 °C
Annual rainfall 1,191 mm 2,062 mm 3,270 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 28 mm 192 mm 555 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 73 research-grade observations of Prestonia quinquangularis 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 22 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.

  • Echites bangii Rusby
  • Echites hulkianus Pulle
  • Echites laurentiae-disca Rusby
  • Echites leptolobus Stadelm.
  • Echites nutans A.Anderson
  • Echites quinquangularis Jacq.
  • Echites rubrovenosus Lindon
  • Guachamaca toxicaria Grosourdy
  • Haemadictyon acutifolium Benth. ex Müll.Arg.
  • Haemadictyon caliginosum Miers
  • Haemadictyon nutans A.DC.
  • Haemadictyon venosum Lindl.
  • Prestonia acutifolia (Benth. ex Müll.Arg.) K.Schum.
  • Prestonia acutifolia var. latissima Markgr.
  • Prestonia marginata Markgr.
  • Prestonia nutans (A.DC.) Voss
  • Prestonia pachyphylla Woodson
  • Prestonia pickelii Markgr.
  • Prestonia simulans Woodson
  • Prestonia venosa (Lindl.) G.Nicholson
  • Temnadenia leptoloba (Stadelm.) Miers
  • Temnadenia quinquangularis (Jacq.) Miers

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.