Theobroma cacao (cacao)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Theobroma cacao, photographed by Ben Keen — fig. a Ben Keen, CC0 1.0 / 2022-03-29 / obs. 194201377

Theobroma cacao, photographed by Aitor — fig. b Aitor, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 185408179

Theobroma cacao, photographed by adel-fridus — fig. c adel-fridus, CC0 1.0 / obs. 170384373

Theobroma cacao, photographed by geralg — fig. d geralg, CC0 1.0 / obs. 197311864

Theobroma cacao, photographed by Pedro Henrique Maloso Ramos — fig. e Pedro Henrique Maloso Ramos, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 134118581

Theobroma cacao, photographed by Bruno Senterre — fig. f Bruno Senterre, CC0 1.0 / obs. 105284357

Theobroma cacao, photographed by Vreni Gem O. Caasi — fig. g Vreni Gem O. Caasi, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 69535605

Theobroma cacao, photographed by Isaac Caswell — fig. h Isaac Caswell, CC0 1.0 / obs. 61142500

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 9 botanical countries

Native distribution of Theobroma cacao, 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
Brazil North	BZN	SOUTHERN AMERICA
Colombia	CLM
Costa Rica	COS
Ecuador	ECU
French Guiana	FRG
Guyana	GUY
Peru	PER
Suriname	SUR
Venezuela	VEN

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 119 in flower of 568 examined

19%

40%

19%

10%

29%

13%

22%

29%

28%

17%

19%

Proportion of examined Theobroma cacao in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	5	27	19%	8% to 37%
Feb	1	21	5%	1% to 23%
Mar	14	35	40%	26% to 56%
Apr	7	37	19%	9% to 34%
May	6	61	10%	5% to 20%
Jun	19	66	29%	19% to 41%
Jul	7	56	13%	6% to 24%
Aug	17	79	22%	14% to 32%
Sep	10	35	29%	16% to 45%
Oct	17	61	28%	18% to 40%
Nov	11	63	17%	10% to 29%
Dec	5	27	19%	8% to 37%

Peak flowering in Mar. Each bar is the share of Theobroma cacao 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. 119 of 568 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 29 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.

Cacao minar Gaertn.
Cacao minus Gaertn.
Cacao sativa Aubl.
Cacao theobroma Tussac
Theobroma cacao f. lacandonense Cuatrec.
Theobroma cacao f. leiocarpum (Bernoulli) Ducke
Theobroma cacao f. pentagonum (Bernoulli) Cuatrec.
Theobroma cacao subsp. cacao
Theobroma cacao subsp. leiocarpum (Bernoulli) Cuatrec.
Theobroma cacao subsp. pentagonum (Bernoulli) León
Theobroma cacao subsp. sativa (Aubl.) León
Theobroma cacao subsp. sphaerocarpum (A.Chev.) Cuatrec.
Theobroma cacao var. leiocarpum (Bernoulli) Cif.
Theobroma caribaeum Sweet
Theobroma integerrimum Stokes
Theobroma kalagua De Wild.
Theobroma leiocarpum Bernoulli
Theobroma minus (Gaertn.) A.Chev.
Theobroma pentagonum Bernoulli
Theobroma saltzmanniana Bernoulli
Theobroma salzmanniana Bernoulli
Theobroma sapidum Pittier
Theobroma sativa (Aubl.) Lign. & Bey
Theobroma sativa var. leucosperma A.Chev.

and 5 more.

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.