Austroblechnum patersonii(R.Br.) Gasper & V.A.O.Dittrich

Strap Water Fern

WFO wfo-0001346716 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Austroblechnum patersonii, photographed by Greg Tasney
fig. a Greg Tasney, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-04-30 / obs. 192179203
Austroblechnum patersonii, photographed by Greg Tasney
fig. b Greg Tasney, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 172136203
Austroblechnum patersonii, photographed by Leon Perrie
fig. c Leon Perrie, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 58346923
Austroblechnum patersonii, photographed by Leon Perrie
fig. d Leon Perrie, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 58266390
Austroblechnum patersonii, photographed by Peter de Lange
fig. e Peter de Lange, CC0 1.0 / obs. 22198128
Austroblechnum patersonii, photographed by Kevin Sparrow
fig. f Kevin Sparrow, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 74450015
Austroblechnum patersonii, photographed by 呂一起(Lyu yi-chi)
fig. g 呂一起(Lyu yi-chi), CC BY 4.0 / obs. 61438917
Austroblechnum patersonii, photographed by naturewatchwidow
fig. h naturewatchwidow, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 58266178

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
03599181
Filed as
Austroblechnum patersonii (R.Br.) Gasper & V.A.O.Dittrich
Det. by
R. C. Moran 2018-01-01
Collected
G. M. Plunkett 2014-06-24
Origin
VU
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 8 botanical countries

Regions where Austroblechnum patersonii is native: Lesser Sunda Is., New Guinea, New South Wales, Norfolk Is., Queensland, Tasmania, Victoria, Society Is. Lesser Sunda Is.New GuineaNew South WalesQueenslandTasmaniaVictoria Norfolk Is.Society Is.
Native distribution of Austroblechnum patersonii, 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
New South Wales NSW AUSTRALASIA
Norfolk Is. NFK
Queensland QLD
Tasmania TAS
Victoria VIC
Lesser Sunda Is. LSI ASIA-TROPICAL
New Guinea NWG
Society Is. SCI PACIFIC

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 256 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 1.6 °C 4.5 °C 10.7 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 20.2 °C 24.2 °C 26.7 °C
Annual rainfall 812 mm 1,190 mm 1,921 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 144 mm 205 mm 260 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 256 research-grade observations of Austroblechnum patersonii 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 13 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.

  • Blechnum patersonii (R.Br.) Mett.
  • Blechnum patersonii subsp. patersonii
  • Blechnum patersonii subsp. queenslandicum T.C.Chambers & P.A.Farrant
  • Blechnum patersonii var. normale Domin
  • Blechnum patersonii var. patersonii
  • Blechnum patersonii var. pinnatilobum F.Muell.
  • Lomaria patersoni (R.Br.) Desv.
  • Lomaria patersonii (R.Br.) Spreng.
  • Lomaria patersonii var. patersonii
  • Lomaria punctata Blume
  • Salpichlaena patersonii (R.Br.) Fée
  • Spicanta patersonii (R.Br.) Kuntze
  • Stegania patersonii R.Br.

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.