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Botanical Family

Strict Genus: Vanilla

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Search by botanical or common name, genus, or family. SilvaGrid also recognizes many botanical synonyms and standard hybrid notation.

Name search: Use Botanical or Common Name to search a full botanical name such as Acer palmatum, a genus such as Acer, or a common name such as maple.
Synonyms: The same field recognizes many outdated or alternative botanical names and links them to their currently accepted taxa.
Hybrids and graft chimaeras: In the same field, you can type a standard 'x' in place of the botanical hybrid symbol (×). Use '+' when searching for graft chimaeras.
Family search: Use Botanical Family to explore taxa within a family such as Rosaceae.

1. Climate

About climate mapping

To make searching practical, SilvaGrid groups the bioclimatic zones from the World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP) into five primary macro-climates:

Tropical: Equatorial and tropical zones defined by consistent year-round warmth. This encompasses the wet tropics, seasonally dry tropics, and cooler high-altitude montane tropics.
Subtropical: Warm transition zones between tropical and temperate regions, typically characterized by mild, largely frost-free winters. (Note: WCVP groups dry-summer Mediterranean climates within this broader biome).
Temperate: Mid-latitude climates defined by distinct seasonal shifts, including a true winter season where regular frosts and plant dormancy are expected.
Arid: Moisture-deficient climates—including true deserts and dry shrublands—where evaporation exceeds precipitation, requiring severe drought adaptations.
Cold: High-latitude subarctic or high-altitude subalpine climates defined by severe winters, prolonged freezing, and highly restricted growing seasons.

These categories describe a species' primary native environment and serve as a broad baseline for cultivation. While many plants can be successfully grown across multiple macroclimates—for example, some species mapped to the Tropical macroclimate can also be grown in temperate climates—others may have much narrower climatic requirements within their mapped macroclimate. Local factors such as frost hardiness, summer heat, rainfall and soil conditions should always be considered before planting.

2. Plant Types

About plant types

SilvaGrid Plant Types are practical horticultural and botanical groupings derived from WCVP life-form descriptions, taxonomy, or a combination of the two. Some correspond closely to established botanical groups, while others bring together plants with similar growth forms for practical discovery.

Trees: Woody plants with persistent above-ground stems, generally forming an elevated crown or canopy. Large herbaceous tree-like plants are excluded.
Shrubs: Woody or partly woody plants with a shrub or subshrub growth form, typically branching low rather than forming a single main trunk.
Climbers & Vines: Plants with a climbing growth habit, including herbaceous climbers and woody lianas that use other vegetation or structures for support.
Conifers: Gymnosperms from the major conifer families, including pines, cypresses, podocarps and their relatives, ranging from low shrubs to large trees.
Palms & Cycads: True palms from the Arecaceae family together with cycads. The two are not close botanical relatives, but are grouped here as a practical horticultural and landscape category.
Ferns: Vascular, spore-producing plants within the fern group, ranging from small ground-layer and epiphytic forms to large tree ferns.
Grasses, Sedges & Rushes: A practical group combining true grasses, sedges, rushes and restios. Bamboos are shown separately because of their distinctive growth form.
Bamboos: Members of the grass family, shown separately from other grasses because of their distinctive growth forms and horticultural use.
Herbaceous Perennials: Non-woody, multi-year plants, including evergreen tropical perennials and large herbaceous forms. Bulbs and other geophytes are shown separately.
Annuals & Biennials: Short-lived plants that complete their life cycle over one or two growing seasons.
Bulbs & Geophytes: Plants with underground storage organs such as bulbs, corms, tubers or rhizomes, allowing them to persist through seasonal dormancy.
Cacti & Succulents: Cacti and other succulent plants with fleshy or thickened tissues associated with water storage, spanning many unrelated botanical groups.
Aquatic & Pond Plants: Plants adapted to living in water or water-saturated soils, including submerged, floating and emergent forms.
Air Plants & Epiphytes: Epiphytic and lithophytic plants that grow on trees or rocks, including many plants commonly described as air plants.

3. Native range (WGSRPD)

Continent

Region

Botanical country

About WGSRPD mapping

SilvaGrid uses the World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) to organise native plant distributions. WGSRPD is an international botanical standard maintained by Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) and is also used by the World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP).

Botanical geography: SilvaGrid uses WGSRPD continents, regions and "botanical countries". These provide consistent units for recording plant distributions, but they do not always correspond exactly to modern political countries.
Consistent distribution data: Using the same geographic framework as WCVP allows SilvaGrid to preserve and compare native-range information consistently across the global plant dataset.

WGSRPD is a system for recording plant distributions rather than a climate, habitat or site-suitability classification.

Genus Vanilla

View Botanical Profile & Insights

A member of the Orchidaceae family, the genus Vanilla is a group comprising 131 taxa. It is native to North America, South America, Africa, Temperate Asia, and Tropical Asia. Across its taxa, it is most often linked to wet tropical and seasonally dry tropical regions. It is predominantly composed of herbaceous perennials.

Data Profile

Taxonomic Scale: 131 taxa (127 base species, 4 variants).
Centers of Diversity: South America (67), Tropical Asia (39), Africa (27)
Primary Climates: Wet Tropical (104), Seasonally Dry Tropical (22), Subtropical (5)
Dominant Forms: Herbaceous Perennials (128), Shrubs (3)

131 taxa found

Showing 30 (page 1 of 5)

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Vanilla abundiflora

Family: Orchidaceae

Tropical Climbers & Vines Herbaceous Perennials

Vanilla acuminata

Family: Orchidaceae

Tropical Climbers & Vines Herbaceous Perennials

Vanilla acuta

Family: Orchidaceae

Tropical Climbers & Vines Herbaceous Perennials

Vanilla africana

Family: Orchidaceae

Tropical Climbers & Vines Herbaceous Perennials

Vanilla albida

Family: Orchidaceae

Tropical Climbers & Vines Herbaceous Perennials

Vanilla allorgeae

— Vanilla Family: Orchidaceae

Tropical Herbaceous Perennials

Vanilla andina

Family: Orchidaceae

Tropical Climbers & Vines Herbaceous Perennials

Vanilla angustipetala

Family: Orchidaceae

Tropical Climbers & Vines Herbaceous Perennials

Vanilla annamica

Family: Orchidaceae

Tropical Climbers & Vines Herbaceous Perennials

Vanilla aphylla

Family: Orchidaceae

Tropical Shrubs

Vanilla appendiculata

Family: Orchidaceae

Tropical Climbers & Vines Herbaceous Perennials

Vanilla arcuata

Family: Orchidaceae

Tropical Herbaceous Perennials

Vanilla armoriquensis

Family: Orchidaceae

Tropical Herbaceous Perennials

Vanilla atropogon

Family: Orchidaceae

Tropical Climbers & Vines Herbaceous Perennials Air Plants

Vanilla atsinananensis

— Vanilla Family: Orchidaceae

Tropical Herbaceous Perennials

Vanilla barbellata

— Wormvine Orchid Family: Orchidaceae

Tropical Climbers & Vines Herbaceous Perennials

Vanilla barrereana

Family: Orchidaceae

Tropical Climbers & Vines Herbaceous Perennials

Vanilla bertoniensis

Family: Orchidaceae

Subtropical Climbers & Vines Herbaceous Perennials

Vanilla bicolor

Family: Orchidaceae

Tropical Herbaceous Perennials Air Plants

Vanilla borneensis

Family: Orchidaceae

Tropical Climbers & Vines Herbaceous Perennials

Vanilla bosseri

— Vanilla Family: Orchidaceae

Tropical Climbers & Vines Herbaceous Perennials

Vanilla bradei

Family: Orchidaceae

Tropical Climbers & Vines Herbaceous Perennials

Vanilla calamitosa

Family: Orchidaceae

Tropical Herbaceous Perennials

Vanilla calyculata

Family: Orchidaceae

Tropical Climbers & Vines Herbaceous Perennials

Vanilla cameroniana

— Vanilla Family: Orchidaceae

Tropical Herbaceous Perennials

Vanilla capixaba

Family: Orchidaceae

Tropical Climbers & Vines Herbaceous Perennials

Vanilla cardinalis

Family: Orchidaceae

Tropical Climbers & Vines Herbaceous Perennials

Vanilla ceronii

Family: Orchidaceae

Tropical Climbers & Vines Herbaceous Perennials

Vanilla chalotii

Family: Orchidaceae

Tropical Climbers & Vines Herbaceous Perennials

Vanilla chamissonis

Family: Orchidaceae

Tropical Climbers & Vines Herbaceous Perennials

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