Senna sophera(L.) Roxb.

algarrobilla

WFO wfo-0000164857 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Senna sophera, photographed by Greg Tasney
fig. a Greg Tasney, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-03-20 / obs. 184026041

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 14 botanical countries

Regions where Senna sophera is native: Aruba, Bahamas, Belize, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Leeward Is., Netherlands Antilles, Panamá, Puerto Rico, Trinidad-Tobago, Windward Is. BelizeCubaDominican RepublicGuyanaHaitiJamaicaPanamáPuerto RicoTrinidad-Tobago ArubaBahamasLeeward Is.Netherlands AntillesWindward Is.
Native distribution of Senna sophera, 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
Aruba ARU SOUTHERN AMERICA
Bahamas BAH
Belize BLZ
Cuba CUB
Dominican Republic DOM
Guyana GUY
Haiti HAI
Jamaica JAM
Leeward Is. LEE
Netherlands Antilles NLA
Panamá PAN
Puerto Rico PUE
Trinidad-Tobago TRT
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.

Flowering 31 in flower of 38 examined

Proportion of examined Senna sophera in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 13 16 81% 57% to 93%
Feb 3 3 too few examined
Mar 1 1 too few examined
Apr 5 5 100% 57% to 100%
May 2 5 40% 12% to 77%
Jun 2 2 too few examined
Jul 0 1 too few examined
Aug 1 1 too few examined
Sep 1 1 too few examined
Oct 2 2 too few examined
Nov 0 0 too few examined
Dec 1 1 too few examined

Peak flowering in Apr. Each bar is the share of Senna sophera 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. 31 of 38 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 9 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. 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 46 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.

  • Cassia aegyptiaca Willd.
  • Cassia atropurpurea Benth.
  • Cassia atroviridis Span.
  • Cassia canca Cav.
  • Cassia chinensis Jacq.
  • Cassia coromandeliana Jacq.
  • Cassia esculenta Roxb.
  • Cassia frutescens Mill.
  • Cassia geminiflora Schrank
  • Cassia indica Poir.
  • Cassia lanceolata Pers.
  • Cassia ligustrina Forssk. ex Benth.
  • Cassia linearis Michx.
  • Cassia occidentalis var. glabra DC.
  • Cassia occidentalis var. sophera (L.) Kuntze
  • Cassia patula Aiton
  • Cassia proboscidea Pollard
  • Cassia purpurea Roxb. ex Lindl.
  • Cassia robinioides Willd.
  • Cassia ruscifolia Jacq.
  • Cassia socotrana Serrato
  • Cassia sophera L.
  • Cassia sophera subsp. purpurea (Roxb. ex Lindl.) Bennet
  • Cassia sophera var. ligustrinoides Benth.

and 22 more.

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. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. 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.