Quaqua mammillaris

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Quaqua mammillaris, photographed by Sam McCarren — fig. c Sam McCarren, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 153850317

Quaqua mammillaris, photographed by douglaseustonbrown — fig. d douglaseustonbrown, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 49368373

Quaqua mammillaris, photographed by Christiaan Viljoen — fig. e Christiaan Viljoen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 175357747

Quaqua mammillaris, photographed by Tony Rebelo — fig. f Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 15357526

Quaqua mammillaris, photographed by Antoinette Eyssell Knox — fig. h Antoinette Eyssell Knox, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 15257129

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 2 botanical countries

Native distribution of Quaqua mammillaris, 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
Cape Provinces	CPP	AFRICA
Namibia	NAM

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 358 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	3.8 °C	6.1 °C	8.2 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	28.2 °C	30.0 °C	32.5 °C
Annual rainfall	109 mm	280 mm	570 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	11 mm	29 mm	77 mm

It is found where winters are cool but frost is light or absent. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 358 research-grade observations of Quaqua mammillaris 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 13 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.

Boucerosia mammillaris (L.) N.E.Br.
Caralluma mammillaris (L.) N.E.Br.
Caralluma winkleri (Dinter) A.C.White & B.Sloane
Caralluma winkleriana (Dinter) E.Phillips
Pectinaria mammillaris (L.) Sweet
Piaranthus mammillaris (L.) G.Don
Piaranthus pullus (Aiton) Haw.
Sarcophagophilus armatus Dinter
Sarcophagophilus winklerianus Dinter
Stapelia mammillaris L.
Stapelia pulla Aiton
Stissera mammillaris (L.) Kuntze
Stisseria mammillaris (L.) Kuntze

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.