Astilbe biternata (Appalachian false goat's beard)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Astilbe biternata, photographed by Will Kuhn — fig. a Will Kuhn, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-15 / obs. 197972032

Astilbe biternata, photographed by Brandon Wheeler — fig. b Brandon Wheeler, CC0 1.0 / obs. 204989579

Astilbe biternata, photographed by Shelby Lyn Sanders — fig. c Shelby Lyn Sanders, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203648385

Astilbe biternata, photographed by Michael J. Papay — fig. d Michael J. Papay, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202224321

Astilbe biternata, photographed by Matt Berger — fig. e Matt Berger, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 136967485

Astilbe biternata, photographed by Scott Morris — fig. f Scott Morris, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 134438925

Astilbe biternata, photographed by Evelyn Davis — fig. g Evelyn Davis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 81018489

Astilbe biternata, photographed by Alan Weakley — fig. h Alan Weakley, CC0 1.0 / obs. 9433641

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 8 botanical countries

Native distribution of Astilbe biternata, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Alabama	ALA	NORTHERN AMERICA
Georgia	GEO
Kentucky	KTY
North Carolina	NCA
South Carolina	SCA
Tennessee	TEN
Virginia	VRG
West Virginia	WVA

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 176 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	-4.3 °C	-2.6 °C	-0.3 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	24.3 °C	26.8 °C	29.8 °C
Annual rainfall	1,210 mm	1,483 mm	2,145 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	241 mm	298 mm	454 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 176 research-grade observations of Astilbe biternata 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 4 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.

Astilbe decandra D.Don
Blondia biternata (Vent.) Raf.
Hoteia biternata C.Morren & Decne.
Tiarella biternata Vent.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
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.