Vanilla phaeanthaRchb.f.

leafy vanilla

WFO wfo-0000331526 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 7 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 7 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.

Vanilla phaeantha, photographed by Laura Gaudette
fig. a Laura Gaudette, CC BY 4.0 / 2020-06-22 / obs. 80852672
Vanilla phaeantha, photographed by JR Ferrer-Paris
fig. b JR Ferrer-Paris, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 1839352
Vanilla phaeantha, photographed by Scott Ward
fig. c Scott Ward, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 158111725
Vanilla phaeantha, photographed by Scott Ward
fig. d Scott Ward, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 109238698
Vanilla phaeantha, photographed by Brandon Corder
fig. e Brandon Corder, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 59685441
Vanilla phaeantha, photographed by Brandon Corder
fig. f Brandon Corder, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 39658009
Vanilla phaeantha, photographed by Brandon Corder
fig. g Brandon Corder, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 59618897
Vanilla phaeantha, photographed by Scott Ward
fig. h Scott Ward, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 158111774

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 16 botanical countries

Regions where Vanilla phaeantha is native: Florida, Mexico Southeast, Bahamas, Brazil North, Brazil Northeast, Brazil Southeast, Brazil West-Central, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Panamá, Trinidad-Tobago, Venezuela, Windward Is. FloridaMexico SoutheastBrazil NorthBrazil NortheastBrazil SoutheastBrazil West-CentralColombiaCosta RicaCubaDominican RepublicJamaicaPanamáTrinidad-TobagoVenezuela BahamasWindward Is.
Native distribution of Vanilla phaeantha, 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
Bahamas BAH SOUTHERN AMERICA
Brazil North BZN
Brazil Northeast BZE
Brazil Southeast BZL
Brazil West-Central BZC
Colombia CLM
Costa Rica COS
Cuba CUB
Dominican Republic DOM
Jamaica JAM
Panamá PAN
Trinidad-Tobago TRT
Venezuela VEN
Windward Is. WIN
Florida FLA NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Southeast MXT

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 41 in flower of 196 examined

Peak flowering in Jun. Each bar is the share of Vanilla phaeantha 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. 41 of 196 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 2 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 4 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.

  • Vanilla bahiana Hoehne
  • Vanilla carinata Rolfe
  • Vanilla gardneri Rolfe
  • Vanilla planifolia var. macrantha Griseb.

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.