Tropical Plant Database - Plant Details

Buddha Belly Plant is a shrub about 18 inches tall with stems swollen and knobby and twisted with bristled scars. The leaves are leathery, orbicular-ovate, peltate, long-petioled, to 12 inches across, deeply 3-5 lobed with obtuse sinuses. The caudex can be up to 12 inches in diameter.
Cymes (flat-topped cluster of flowers in which the central or terminal flower opens first) are terminal, long-peduncled with red pedicels. Flowers are small, coral-red.
(Watson, L., and Dallwitz, M. J. 1992. The Families of Flowering Plants: Descriptions, Illustrations, Identification, and Information Retrieval.)

The berries and sap of Buddha Belly Plant are poisonous.
(Watson, L., and Dallwitz, M. J. 1992. The Families of Flowering Plants: Descriptions, Illustrations, Identification, and Information Retrieval.)

(Information for this species compiled and recorded by Camelia Cirnaru, NTBG Consultant.)

Jatropha podagrica is found in Central American, Southern Honduras and Northern Nicaragua where it was first observed and described by the botanist Hooker in 1848.
(Watson, L., and Dallwitz, M. J. 1992. The Families of Flowering Plants: Descriptions, Illustrations, Identification, and Information Retrieval.)

We currently have 1 herbarium specimens for Jatropha podagrica in our collection. Click on any specimen below to view the herbarium sheet data.

• 003235 - collected by David H. Lorence in 1990