Plate 1 figs. a–f · 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.
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 21 botanical countries
| Region | TDWG code | Continent |
|---|---|---|
| Angola | ANG | AFRICA |
| Benin | BEN | |
| Burkina | BKN | |
| Cameroon | CMN | |
| Comoros | COM | |
| Congo | CON | |
| Gambia | GAM | |
| Ghana | GHA | |
| Ivory Coast | IVO | |
| Kenya | KEN | |
| Madagascar | MDG | |
| Malawi | MLW | |
| Mozambique | MOZ | |
| Nigeria | NGA | |
| Senegal | SEN | |
| Sierra Leone | SIE | |
| Tanzania | TAN | |
| Togo | TOG | |
| Uganda | UGA | |
| Zambia | ZAM | |
| Zimbabwe | ZIM |
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 103 observations
| Condition | 5th percentile | Median | 95th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coldest month, mean daily low | 9.7 °C | 17.9 °C | 23.2 °C |
| Warmest month, mean daily high | 25.7 °C | 28.7 °C | 33.9 °C |
| Annual rainfall | 1,090 mm | 1,699 mm | 3,419 mm |
| Rainfall in the driest quarter | 3 mm | 67 mm | 392 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 103 research-grade observations of Raphia farinifera 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 12 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.
- Metroxylon ruffia (Jacq.) Spreng.
- Raphia kirkii Engl. ex Becc.
- Raphia kirkii var. grandis Engl. ex Becc.
- Raphia kirkii var. longicarpa Engl. ex Becc.
- Raphia lyciosa Comm. ex Kunth
- Raphia pedunculata P.Beauv.
- Raphia polymita Comm. ex Kunth
- Raphia ruffia (Jacq.) Mart.
- Raphia tamatavensis Sadeb.
- Sagus farinifera Gaertn.
- Sagus pedunculata (P.Beauv.) Poir.
- Sagus ruffia Jacq.
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.