Zamioculcas zamiifolia(G.Lodd.) Engl.

Zanzibar gemZZ plant

WFO wfo-0000335147 Accepted WFO 2026-06 3 photographs CC0 In the accuracy benchmark

Plate 1 figs. a–c · 1 observation

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 1 time, 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.

Zamioculcas zamiifolia, photographed by Andrew Deacon
fig. a Andrew Deacon, CC0 1.0 / 2015-11-22 / obs. 15754503
Zamioculcas zamiifolia, photographed by Andrew Deacon
fig. b Andrew Deacon, CC0 1.0 / obs. 15754512
Zamioculcas zamiifolia, photographed by Andrew Deacon
fig. c Andrew Deacon, CC0 1.0 / obs. 15754507

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 6 botanical countries

Regions where Zamioculcas zamiifolia is native: Kenya, KwaZulu-Natal, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zimbabwe KenyaKwaZulu-NatalMalawiMozambiqueTanzaniaZimbabwe
Native distribution of Zamioculcas zamiifolia, 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
Kenya KEN AFRICA
KwaZulu-Natal NAT
Malawi MLW
Mozambique MOZ
Tanzania TAN
Zimbabwe ZIM

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 n = 49 observations

Peak flowering in Jan, from 49 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 3 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.

  • Caladium zamiifolium G.Lodd.
  • Zamioculcas lanceolata Peter
  • Zamioculcas loddigesii Schott

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs, flowering annotations and the common name, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. 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.