Calanthe puberulaLindl.

WFO wfo-0000764718 Accepted WFO 2026-06 4 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–d · 1 observation

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 1 time, 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.

Calanthe puberula, photographed by Jacy Chen
fig. a Jacy Chen, CC BY 4.0 / 2017-08-29 / obs. 105387587

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 14 botanical countries

Regions where Calanthe puberula is native: China South-Central, China Southeast, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Tibet, Assam, Bangladesh, East Himalaya, Myanmar, Nepal, Thailand, Vietnam, West Himalaya China South-CentralChina SoutheastJapanTaiwanTibetAssamBangladeshEast HimalayaMyanmarNepalThailandVietnamWest Himalaya Korea
Native distribution of Calanthe puberula, 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
Assam ASS ASIA-TROPICAL
Bangladesh BAN
East Himalaya EHM
Myanmar MYA
Nepal NEP
Thailand THA
Vietnam VIE
West Himalaya WHM
China South-Central CHC ASIA-TEMPERATE
China Southeast CHS
Japan JAP
Korea KOR
Taiwan TAI
Tibet CHT

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 127 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -2.4 °C 4.2 °C 10.8 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 18.4 °C 24.3 °C 29.2 °C
Annual rainfall 2,087 mm 3,661 mm 4,562 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 148 mm 316 mm 610 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 127 research-grade observations of Calanthe puberula 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 17 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.

  • Alismorchis puberula Kuntze
  • Alismorchis reflexa Kuntze
  • Alismorkis puberula (Lindl.) Kuntze
  • Alismorkis reflexa (Maxim.) Kuntze
  • Calanthe amoena W.W.Sm.
  • Calanthe lepida W.W.Sm.
  • Calanthe okushirensis Miyabe & Tatew.
  • Calanthe puberula var. formosana (Murata) M.Hiroe
  • Calanthe puberula var. okushirensis (Miyabe & Tatew.) M.Hiroe
  • Calanthe puberula var. reflexa (Maxim.) M.Hiroe
  • Calanthe reflexa Maxim.
  • Calanthe reflexa var. formosana Murata
  • Calanthe reflexa var. okushirensis (Miyabe & Tatew.) Ohwi
  • Calanthe reflexa var. puberula (Lindl.) Kudô
  • Calanthe similis Schltr.
  • Paracalanthe reflexa (Maxim.) Kudô
  • Paracalanthe reflexa var. puberula (Lindl.) Kudô

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.