Vitex obovataE.Mey.

hairy fingerleaf

WFO wfo-0000333320 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 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.

Vitex obovata, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. a Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2020-02-23 / obs. 64995280
Vitex obovata, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. b Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 64724792
Vitex obovata, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. c Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 64639307
Vitex obovata, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. d Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 64995268
Vitex obovata, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. e Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 64639288
Vitex obovata, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. f Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 64724834
Vitex obovata, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. g Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 64639412
Vitex obovata, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. h Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 64530193

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 5 botanical countries

Regions where Vitex obovata is native: Cape Provinces, Eswatini, KwaZulu-Natal, Mozambique, Northern Provinces Cape ProvincesEswatiniKwaZulu-NatalMozambiqueNorthern Provinces
Native distribution of Vitex obovata, 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.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Cape Provinces CPP AFRICA
Eswatini SWZ
KwaZulu-Natal NAT
Mozambique MOZ
Northern Provinces TVL

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.

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.

  • Vitex obovata subsp. wilmsii (Gürke) Bredenkamp & Botha
  • Vitex reflexa H.Pearson
  • Vitex wilmsii Gürke
  • Vitex wilmsii var. reflexa (H.Pearson) W.Piep.

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.