Schotia afra (Hottentot's Bean)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Schotia afra, photographed by Nicola van Berkel — fig. a Nicola van Berkel, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-03-31 / obs. 187361466

Schotia afra, photographed by Tim Kirsten — fig. b Tim Kirsten, CC0 1.0 / obs. 155141566

Schotia afra, photographed by Andrew Gillespie — fig. c Andrew Gillespie, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 125236752

Schotia afra, photographed by Shaun Swanepoel — fig. d Shaun Swanepoel, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 126764950

Schotia afra, photographed by Caroline Voget — fig. e Caroline Voget, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 115308859

Schotia afra, photographed by chrishorak — fig. f chrishorak, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 108994728

Schotia afra, photographed by douglaseustonbrown — fig. h douglaseustonbrown, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 62011372

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 Schotia afra, 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.

Flowering 437 in flower of 853 examined

75%

59%

73%

53%

61%

46%

32%

17%

41%

56%

39%

61%

Proportion of examined Schotia afra in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	52	69	75%	64% to 84%
Feb	54	92	59%	48% to 68%
Mar	43	59	73%	60% to 83%
Apr	46	87	53%	42% to 63%
May	33	54	61%	48% to 73%
Jun	22	48	46%	33% to 60%
Jul	14	44	32%	20% to 47%
Aug	13	78	17%	10% to 26%
Sep	26	64	41%	29% to 53%
Oct	56	100	56%	46% to 65%
Nov	32	83	39%	29% to 49%
Dec	46	75	61%	50% to 72%

Peak flowering in Jan. Each bar is the share of Schotia afra observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 437 of 853 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 10 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.

Guaiacum afrum L.
Guillandinodes afra (L.) Kuntze
Schotia alata Thunb.
Schotia angustifolia E.Mey.
Schotia parvifolia Jacq.
Schotia speciosa Jacq.
Schotia stipulata W.T.Aiton
Schotia tamarindifolia Afzel. ex Sims
Theodora speciosa (Jacq.) Medik.
Theodora stipulata Eckl. & Zeyh.

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.