The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Humbertia is a monotypic genus of flowering plants belonging to the family Convolvulaceae (morning glory family). It only contains one species, Humbertia madagascariensis Lam. It is native to Madagascar. It is known in French as bois de fer; it is endemic to southeastern Madagascar where it occurs in humid evergreen forests at altitudes up to about 600 m (2,000 ft).
The genus name (Humbertia) is in honour of Philibert Commerson (1727–1773), a French naturalist, best known for accompanying Louis Antoine de Bougainville on his voyage of circumnavigation in 1766–1769. The Latin specific epithet, madagascariensis, means coming from Madagascar. Both genus and species were first described and published by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck in Encycl. Vol.2 on page 356 in 1786.
The lowland forest in the east of Madagascar where this tree is found includes such characteristic species as Myristicaceae, Anthostema, Protium, Allantospermum, Magnistipula, Chaetocarpus, Tsebona macrantha, Perriera and Dialyceras. The birds living in this evergreen woodland include the brown mesite, the Madagascar serpent eagle, the scaly ground roller, the dusky tetraka, the red-tailed newtonia, the helmet vanga and the Bernier's vanga.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Humbertia by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts are shared under the same licence.
