Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, CC BY, via GBIF · observed growing wild

Cyphostemma stegosaurus Verdc.

Vitaceae

Climate known 5 photographs Cactus or succulent

Every figure on this page is derived from public data by a stated rule and says its source; nothing here is written by a person or a model, except the Wikipedia passage, which is quoted and marked as such. How it is made.

About the genus · Cyphostemma

Cyphostemma is a flowering plant genus in the family Vitaceae, with around 250 species distributed throughout the tropics and subtropics. These species are caudiciform and used to belong to the genus Cissus. The genus name comes from Greek kyphos, meaning hump, and stemma, meaning garland.

Text from Wikipedia, “Cyphostemma”, CC BY-SA 4.0, quoted as written.

Family

Vitaceae

Described by

Verdc.

Native to

Tanzania

Wild records

4 in range· 4 open

At a glance

Warmest month

29°C

Oct, mean day; nights 17 °C (CHELSA)

Rain

1141mm/yr

8 wet months · peak Jan 225 mm (CHELSA)

Light

35–44DLI

mol/m²/day, winter to summer, open sky (CHELSA shortwave)

In short condensed by rule from the cultivation cards · not written by a person

Grouped as a cactus or succulent by the genus Cyphostemma, which is reliably one kind of plant (archetype table). Rain rule: a rainy season, December to March at the habitat (not shifted), at the year's mean temperature, so called neither winter nor summer. Habitat rain 1141 mm a year, wettest January at 225 mm, driest July at 1 mm (habitat calendar, southern hemisphere). Open sky over the habitat: 35 to 44 mol/m²/day. Cold floor 9.0 °C (1st-percentile habitat night, NASA POWER).

Each sentence is one card's own one-line form, written by the same rule as the card (Its year, Rain, Light, Temperature); the note cannot say what a card does not. Months are given for the northern hemisphere (set your site in Settings to change this), and the habitat's own alongside. The cards · the figures.

Cultivation

Grouped as a cactus or succulent by the genus Cyphostemma, which is reliably one kind of plant (archetype table). The table holds no figure for this group, which spans too much for one minimum; the cold floor is the habitat's alone, and no prose comes from the table.

Its year Rain rule: a rainy season, December to March at the habitat (not shifted), at the year's mean temperature, so called neither winter nor summer.

This species’ habitat figures, and what two fixed rules read from them.

The rain rule reads a rainy season with no name: 70% of the year's rain (815 mm of 1141 mm) falls in December to March, whose mean temperature, 21.0 °C, is within half a degree of the year's, 21.0 °C, so it is neither the cooler nor the warmer part of the year. Months are the habitat's, southern hemisphere, within 10° of the equator; with no thermal season there there is no season to reverse, so they are not shifted for a collection elsewhere.

Read from the median year of CHELSA monthly rainfall and mean temperature across the envelope cells: the rain rule takes the smallest set of months carrying 70% of the rain and calls it winter when its mean is more than half a degree below the year's, summer when more than that above, and neither in between; the temperature rule, used only under 120 mm, names the cooler six months when they are at least a degree cooler than the other six. Months are shifted for the other hemisphere only where the temperature curve gives a season to reverse. A reading of the curves, not an observation of the plant.

Rain Habitat rain 1141 mm a year, wettest January at 225 mm, driest July at 1 mm (habitat calendar, southern hemisphere).

This species’ habitat figures, with their source.

1141 mm a year at the habitat, 815 mm of it December to March. Wettest month January at 225 mm, driest July at 1 mm; 3 months under 5 mm. Across the envelope cells the year's total runs 918 mm to 1615 mm (10th to 90th percentile of each cell's own year) (median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA; habitat calendar, southern hemisphere).

CHELSA monthly precipitation, median year across the envelope cells. The rain that falls where the species is recorded; nothing about how the plant takes water.

Light Open sky over the habitat: 35 to 44 mol/m²/day.

This species’ habitat figures, with their source.

Open sky over the habitat: 35 to 44 mol/m²/day across the year (daily light integral, median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA; the lowest 10th-percentile month across the cells is 32, the highest 90th-percentile month 46).

CHELSA shortwave radiation at each envelope cell, a daily-mean flux taken to a daily total and converted at 2.07 mol of PAR per MJ. The sky over the habitat, measured; what reaches a plant under a rock, a shrub or a shade cloth is not.

Warmth and air Cold floor 9.0 °C (1st-percentile habitat night, NASA POWER).

This species’ habitat figures, with their source.

Temperature

Coldest: the 1st-percentile night over 44 years at the typical cell is 9.0 °C, the absolute minimum 6.2 °C, no frost in 44 years (NASA POWER daily minima). Warmest: the 99th-percentile day is 34.2 °C. Monthly means: coldest night 13.1 °C in July (across the envelope cells 10.8 °C to 15.1 °C), warmest day 29.3 °C in October (median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA). Cold floor: 9.0 °C, which is the 1st-percentile night over 44 years at the typical cell (NASA POWER).

NASA POWER daily minima and maxima 1981–2024 at the typical cell, lapse-corrected to its elevation; CHELSA monthly means, median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA. The cold floor is the figure named in its sentence. Not a measured survival limit for any plant in a pot.

Humidity

Relative humidity at the habitat: 49 to 66% across the year (monthly means, median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA). A figure about the air, saying nothing about how the plant takes water.

CHELSA relative humidity, median year across the envelope cells.

The figures the cards read from are in Climate below, and where they came from in Natural habitat.

Climate across the habitat

day night rain 10th–90th percentile across 4 habitat cells cold quarter: the three months around the coldest night extremes over 44 years at the typical cell, marked at the edge: undated DLI, mol/m²/dayRH %each on its own scale

Figures by month

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Day °C	26 / 23–27	26 / 23–28	26 / 24–28	26 / 23–28	26 / 23–28	26 / 23–28	26 / 23–28	27 / 25–29	29 / 27–30	29 / 27–31	28 / 25–30	26 / 24–28
Night °C	17 / 15–18	17 / 15–18	17 / 15–18	17 / 15–18	16 / 13–17	14 / 12–16	13 / 11–15	14 / 12–16	15 / 14–17	17 / 15–18	17 / 15–18	17 / 15–18
Rain mm	225 / 175–267	170 / 137–214	206 / 173–357	120 / 115–269	32 / 24–63	2 / 1–12	1 / 0–10	2 / 1–8	7 / 3–10	33 / 13–59	129 / 62–159	214 / 168–256
DLI	37 / 33–38	39 / 34–39	38 / 34–39	35 / 34–37	35 / 35–36	36 / 35–37	37 / 36–38	39 / 38–40	43 / 41–44	44 / 40–46	39 / 35–44	36 / 32–39
RH %	66 / 62–67	66 / 62–66	66 / 62–68	65 / 60–67	58 / 56–59	53 / 52–53	51 / 49–52	50 / 48–51	49 / 47–50	51 / 49–54	55 / 52–62	63 / 59–67

Each figure is the median across the 4 grid cells holding the 4 in-range records, with the 10th–90th percentile span across those cells after the slash where it differs. Extremes and elevation were read at the typical cell 1976:4280 (-8.825, 34.025). Over 44 years there: absolute minimum 6.2 °C, 1st-percentile night 9.0 °C, 99th-percentile day 34.2 °C. Normals: CHELSA V2.1 1981–2010 climatology, 0.05° cells (each the mean of ~36 1 km pixels). Envelope: median and 10th–90th percentile of each month across the 4 distinct grid cells holding the 4 in-range records; extremes and elevation at the typical cell 1976:4280 (its coldest month's mean night nearest the median across cells); its position is the cell centre. Extremes: NASA POWER (MERRA-2) daily 1981–2024, cell -9.00_33.750, lapse-corrected -772 m at 6.5 °C/km. Elevation: ETOPO 2022, 1114 m (cell mean).

Natural habitat

Native range as published by WCVP.

Openly licensed records inside the range, framed on where they fall.

NativeTanzania

Kew's description“scrambling perennial” · “seasonally dry tropical”· quoted from WCVP, RBG Kew (CC BY 4.0); not derived here

Evidence usedThe map marker and the climate envelope rest on all 4 georeferenced records inside the native range, all openly licensed and shown on the map. Under a dozen records: treat the map and the climate as indicative.

Photographs

Photographs: Naturalis Biodiversity Center, CC0, via GBIF (3); Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, CC BY, via GBIF.

Photographs: iNaturalist did not answer when this page was built; what is shown came from the sources that did.

Papers naming this species

Works whose title or abstract names Cyphostemma stegosaurus, most cited first, from OpenAlex (CC0). A mention, not a cultivation source: nothing on this page is drawn from them.

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