Acaena ovalifoliaRuiz & Pav.

WFO wfo-0001018923 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Acaena ovalifolia, photographed by Cesar Ormazabal
fig. a Cesar Ormazabal, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-03-20 / obs. 191107582
Acaena ovalifolia, photographed by Zinnia Xu
fig. b Zinnia Xu, CC0 1.0 / obs. 177961706
Acaena ovalifolia, photographed by Nicolás Lavandero
fig. c Nicolás Lavandero, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 179206191
Acaena ovalifolia, photographed by Cesar Ormazabal
fig. d Cesar Ormazabal, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 176396043
Acaena ovalifolia, photographed by Jens-Christian Svenning
fig. e Jens-Christian Svenning, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 159411719
Acaena ovalifolia, photographed by Cristian Riquelme
fig. f Cristian Riquelme, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 109003700
Acaena ovalifolia, photographed by María Regina Silva
fig. g María Regina Silva, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 97659831
Acaena ovalifolia, photographed by Nolan Exe
fig. h Nolan Exe, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 60452348

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 10 botanical countries

Regions where Acaena ovalifolia is native: Falkland Is., Argentina Northeast, Argentina Northwest, Argentina South, Bolivia, Chile Central, Colombia, Ecuador, Juan Fernández Is., Peru Falkland Is.Argentina NortheastArgentina NorthwestArgentina SouthBoliviaChile CentralColombiaEcuadorPeru
Native distribution of Acaena ovalifolia, 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
Argentina Northeast AGE SOUTHERN AMERICA
Argentina Northwest AGW
Argentina South AGS
Bolivia BOL
Chile Central CLC
Colombia CLM
Ecuador ECU
Juan Fernández Is. JNF
Peru PER
Falkland Is. FAL ANTARCTICA

Not drawn on the map: Juan Fernández Is.. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is listed rather than guessed at.

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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 439 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -5.0 °C -1.2 °C 6.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 10.5 °C 15.6 °C 22.9 °C
Annual rainfall 815 mm 1,974 mm 4,574 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 108 mm 225 mm 728 mm

It is found where winters bring light frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 439 research-grade observations of Acaena ovalifolia that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.

Also published as 28 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.

  • Acaena elegans Gay
  • Acaena hirsuta Phil.
  • Acaena krausei var. hirsuta (Phil.) Reiche
  • Acaena micranthera Bitter
  • Acaena ovalifolia subsp. australis Bitter
  • Acaena ovalifolia subsp. chamaephyllon Bitter
  • Acaena ovalifolia subsp. elegans (Gay) Bitter
  • Acaena ovalifolia subsp. glabricaulis Bitter
  • Acaena ovalifolia var. calophylla Bitter
  • Acaena ovalifolia var. calvescenticupula Bitter
  • Acaena ovalifolia var. chamanthera Bitter
  • Acaena ovalifolia var. chubutensis Bitter
  • Acaena ovalifolia var. dolichacantha Bitter
  • Acaena ovalifolia var. elegans (Gay) Reiche
  • Acaena ovalifolia var. hirsuta Hosseus
  • Acaena ovalifolia var. incisiserrata Bitter
  • Acaena ovalifolia var. insulae-exterioris Bitter
  • Acaena ovalifolia var. nirihuaoensis Hosseus
  • Acaena ovalifolia var. serrata Bitter
  • Acaena ovalifolia var. subglabrescens Bitter
  • Acaena ovalifolia var. subserrata Bitter
  • Acaena ovalifolia var. subsexjuga Bitter
  • Acaena ovalifolia var. subtuspellita Bitter
  • Acaena ovalifolia var. tenerrima Bitter

and 4 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, 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.