Breynia cernua(Poir.) Müll.Arg.

WFO wfo-0000411808 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 2 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 2 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.

Breynia cernua, photographed by Steve Fitzgerald
fig. a Steve Fitzgerald, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2021-08-20 / obs. 151949244
Breynia cernua, photographed by Steve Fitzgerald
fig. b Steve Fitzgerald, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 151949250
Breynia cernua, photographed by Steve Fitzgerald
fig. c Steve Fitzgerald, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 151949258
Breynia cernua, photographed by Matthew Borella
fig. d Matthew Borella, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 173818209
Breynia cernua, photographed by Matthew Borella
fig. e Matthew Borella, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 173818216
Breynia cernua, photographed by Matthew Borella
fig. f Matthew Borella, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 173818227
Breynia cernua, photographed by Steve Fitzgerald
fig. g Steve Fitzgerald, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 151949268
Breynia cernua, photographed by Steve Fitzgerald
fig. h Steve Fitzgerald, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 151949276

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 13 botanical countries

Regions where Breynia cernua is native: Bismarck Archipelago, Borneo, Jawa, Lesser Sunda Is., New Guinea, Philippines, Solomon Is., Sulawesi, Sumatera, New South Wales, Northern Territory, Queensland, Western Australia Bismarck ArchipelagoBorneoJawaLesser Sunda Is.New GuineaPhilippinesSolomon Is.SulawesiSumateraNew South WalesNorthern TerritoryQueenslandWestern Australia
Native distribution of Breynia cernua, 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
Bismarck Archipelago BIS ASIA-TROPICAL
Borneo BOR
Jawa JAW
Lesser Sunda Is. LSI
New Guinea NWG
Philippines PHI
Solomon Is. SOL
Sulawesi SUL
Sumatera SUM
New South Wales NSW AUSTRALASIA
Northern Territory NTA
Queensland QLD
Western Australia WAU

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 83 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 12.5 °C 18.9 °C 20.6 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 27.1 °C 33.2 °C 36.6 °C
Annual rainfall 1,128 mm 1,823 mm 2,352 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 4 mm 9 mm 196 mm

It is not found anywhere that gets close to freezing. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 83 research-grade observations of Breynia cernua 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.

  • Breynia cernua var. acutifolia (Müll.Arg.) Müll.Arg.
  • Breynia cernua var. genuina Müll.Arg.
  • Breynia rubra (Blume) Müll.Arg.
  • Breynia rumpens J.J.Sm.
  • Melanthesa cernua (Poir.) Decne.
  • Melanthesa cernua var. acutifolia Müll.Arg.
  • Melanthesa rubra Blume
  • Phyllanthus blumei Steud.
  • Phyllanthus cernuus Poir.
  • Phyllanthus ruber Noronha

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.