Adiantum concinnumHumb. & Bonpl. ex Willd.

polished maidenhair

WFO wfo-0001109470 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Adiantum concinnum, photographed by Zazil Dellamary
fig. a Zazil Dellamary, CC BY 4.0 / 2020-08-06 / obs. 99518800

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.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
962710
Filed as
Adiantum concinnum Humb. & Bonpl. ex Willd.
Det. by
A. H. Liogier 1986-01-01
Collected
A. H. Liogier 1986-01-15
Origin
PR
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 27 botanical countries

Regions where Adiantum concinnum is native: Mexico Central, Mexico Gulf, Mexico Northeast, Mexico Northwest, Mexico Southeast, Mexico Southwest, Belize, Brazil Southeast, Brazil West-Central, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Galápagos, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Leeward Is., Nicaragua, Panamá, Peru, Puerto Rico, Trinidad-Tobago, Venezuela, Windward Is. Mexico CentralMexico GulfMexico NortheastMexico NorthwestMexico SoutheastMexico SouthwestBelizeBrazil SoutheastBrazil West-CentralColombiaCosta RicaCubaEcuadorEl SalvadorGuatemalaHaitiHondurasJamaicaNicaraguaPanamáPeruPuerto RicoTrinidad-TobagoVenezuela GalápagosLeeward Is.Windward Is.
Native distribution of Adiantum concinnum, 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. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Belize BLZ SOUTHERN AMERICA
Brazil Southeast BZL
Brazil West-Central BZC
Colombia CLM
Costa Rica COS
Cuba CUB
Ecuador ECU
El Salvador ELS
Galápagos GAL
Guatemala GUA
Haiti HAI
Honduras HON
Jamaica JAM
Leeward Is. LEE
Nicaragua NIC
Panamá PAN
Peru PER
Puerto Rico PUE
Trinidad-Tobago TRT
Venezuela VEN
Windward Is. WIN
Mexico Central MXC NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Gulf MXG
Mexico Northeast MXE
Mexico Northwest MXN
Mexico Southeast MXT
Mexico Southwest MXS

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 541 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 7.8 °C 14.0 °C 20.7 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 23.3 °C 27.5 °C 32.8 °C
Annual rainfall 870 mm 1,899 mm 3,846 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 15 mm 48 mm 295 mm

It is barely found anywhere that freezes. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 541 research-grade observations of Adiantum concinnum 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 10 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.

  • Adiantum affine M.Martens & Galeotti
  • Adiantum concinnum var. flemingii Fleming
  • Adiantum concinnum var. latum Jacob-Makoy
  • Adiantum concinnum var. laxum T.Moore
  • Adiantum concinnum var. pendens Lowe
  • Adiantum concinnum var. subscandens Hook. & Baker
  • Adiantum concinnum var. subvolubile Mett.
  • Adiantum lutescens Moug. ex Fée
  • Adiantum ramyam B.K.Nayar & Geev.
  • Adiantum tenerum Schkuhr

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. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. 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.