Aleuritopteris pteridioides(Reichard) Windham & Schuettp.

southern lipfern

WFO wfo-1000079480 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 3 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 3 times, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Aleuritopteris pteridioides, photographed by Bastien Alegot
fig. a Bastien Alegot, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-02-26 / obs. 114747464
Aleuritopteris pteridioides, photographed by Bastien Alegot
fig. b Bastien Alegot, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 114540731
Aleuritopteris pteridioides, photographed by Bastien Alegot
fig. c Bastien Alegot, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 114747595
Aleuritopteris pteridioides, photographed by Bastien Alegot
fig. d Bastien Alegot, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 114542357
Aleuritopteris pteridioides, photographed by Bastien Alegot
fig. e Bastien Alegot, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 114747618
Aleuritopteris pteridioides, photographed by Bastien Alegot
fig. f Bastien Alegot, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 114542426
Aleuritopteris pteridioides, photographed by Asher P Higgins
fig. g Asher P Higgins, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 186097454
Aleuritopteris pteridioides, photographed by Asher P Higgins
fig. h Asher P Higgins, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 186097321

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
3895865
Filed as
Cheilanthes fragrans (L.) Sw.
Det. by
not recorded on this sheet
Collected
not recorded
Origin
not recorded
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 18 botanical countries

Regions where Aleuritopteris pteridioides is native: Algeria, Azores, Canary Is., Chad, Madeira, Morocco, East Aegean Is., Türkiye, Baleares, Corse, France, Greece, Italy, Kriti, Portugal, Sardegna, Sicilia, Spain AlgeriaChadMoroccoEast Aegean Is.TürkiyeCorseFranceGreeceItalyKritiPortugalSiciliaSpain AzoresCanary Is.MadeiraBalearesSardegna
Native distribution of Aleuritopteris pteridioides, 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
Baleares BAL EUROPE
Corse COR
France FRA
Greece GRC
Italy ITA
Kriti KRI
Portugal POR
Sardegna SAR
Sicilia SIC
Spain SPA
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Azores AZO
Canary Is. CNY
Chad CHA
Madeira MDR
Morocco MOR
East Aegean Is. EAI ASIA-TEMPERATE
Türkiye TUR

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 130 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 0.4 °C 5.3 °C 13.8 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 22.5 °C 27.1 °C 33.1 °C
Annual rainfall 333 mm 704 mm 1,018 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 6 mm 58 mm 118 mm

It is found where winters are cool but frost is light or absent. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 130 research-grade observations of Aleuritopteris pteridioides 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.

  • Adiantum fragrans L.f.
  • Adiantum odoratum Poir.
  • Adiantum pusillum All. ex Pollini
  • Adiantum pusillum Willd. ex Bernh.
  • Adiantum suaveolens Poir.
  • Allosorus fragrans Farw.
  • Allosorus pteridioides (Reichard) Christenh.
  • Cheilanthes fragrans (L.) Webb ex Benth.
  • Cheilanthes fragrans (L.) Sw.
  • Cheilanthes fragrans subsp. maderensis (Lowe) Benl
  • Cheilanthes maderensis Lowe
  • Cheilanthes microphylla Buch
  • Cheilanthes odora prol. maderensis (Lowe) Rouy
  • Cheilanthes pteridiodes var. maderensis (Lowe) Trab.
  • Cheilanthes pteridioides (Reichard) C.Chr.
  • Cheilanthes pteridioides f. maderensis (Lowe) Maire & Weiller
  • Cheilanthes pteridioides subsp. maderensis (Lowe) O.Bolòs, Vigo, Masalles & Ninot
  • Cheilanthes pteridioides var. maderensis (Lowe) Trab.
  • Cheilanthes squamosa Heer & Regel
  • Cheilanthes suaveolens Sw.
  • Hemionitis maderensis (Lowe) Christenh.
  • Hemionitis pteridioides (Reichard) Christenh.
  • Hemionitis quezelii (Tardieu) Christenh.
  • Negripteris quezelii Tardieu

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. USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol CHMI4. public domain. 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.