Choristosoria viridis(Forssk.) Windham & Schuettp.

green cliffbrake

WFO wfo-1000079641 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Choristosoria viridis, photographed by Greg Tasney
fig. a Greg Tasney, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-06-09 / obs. 204580867

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
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Accession
K000197485
Filed as
Pellaea viridis (Forssk.) Prantl
Det. by
Goyder, D. J.
Collected
Katende, T.; Sheil, D. 1993-01-10
Origin
UG
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 31 botanical countries

Regions where Choristosoria viridis is native: Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Cape Provinces, Comoros, DR Congo, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Free State, Kenya, KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Northern Provinces, Réunion, Rodrigues, Rwanda, Seychelles, Socotra, Somalia, Sudan-South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Brazil Southeast AngolaBotswanaBurundiCape ProvincesDR CongoEswatiniEthiopiaFree StateKenyaKwaZulu-NatalLesothoMadagascarMalawiMozambiqueNamibiaNorthern ProvincesRwandaSomaliaSudan-South SudanTanzaniaUgandaZimbabweSaudi ArabiaYemenBrazil Southeast ComorosMauritiusRéunionRodriguesSeychelles
Native distribution of Choristosoria viridis, 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
Angola ANG AFRICA
Botswana BOT
Burundi BUR
Cape Provinces CPP
Comoros COM
DR Congo ZAI
Eswatini SWZ
Ethiopia ETH
Free State OFS
Kenya KEN
KwaZulu-Natal NAT
Lesotho LES
Madagascar MDG
Malawi MLW
Mauritius MAU
Mozambique MOZ
Namibia NAM
Northern Provinces TVL
Réunion REU
Rodrigues ROD
Rwanda RWA
Seychelles SEY
Socotra SOC
Somalia SOM
Sudan-South Sudan SUD
Tanzania TAN
Uganda UGA
Zimbabwe ZIM
Saudi Arabia SAU ASIA-TEMPERATE
Yemen YEM
Brazil Southeast BZL SOUTHERN AMERICA

Not drawn on the map: Socotra. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is listed rather than guessed at.

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 2,003 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 2.5 °C 7.5 °C 19.0 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 23.3 °C 26.1 °C 31.7 °C
Annual rainfall 590 mm 915 mm 1,423 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 15 mm 95 mm 245 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 2,003 research-grade observations of Choristosoria viridis 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 32 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 viride (Forssk.) Vahl
  • Allosorus adiantoides C.Presl
  • Allosorus flavescens Kuntze
  • Allosorus hastatus var. macrophyllus (Kunze) Pappe & Rawson
  • Allosorus viridis (Forssk.) Kuntze
  • Cassebeera viridis (Forssk.) Farw.
  • Cheilanthes hastata var. canonica Kunze
  • Cheilanthes hastata var. macrophylla Kunze
  • Cheilanthes macrophylla Kunze
  • Cheilanthes viridis (Forssk.) Sw.
  • Cheilanthes viridis var. macrophylla (Kunzel) Schelpe & N.C.Anthony
  • Hemionitis flavescens (Fée) Christenh.
  • Hemionitis viridis (Forssk.) Christenh.
  • Oeosporangium viride (Forssk.) Fraser-Jenk. & Pariyar
  • Ormopteris flavescens (Fée) Barbará
  • Pellaea adiantoides J.Sm.
  • Pellaea bongardiana Baker
  • Pellaea flavescens Fée
  • Pellaea hastata var. macrophylla (Kunze) Hook.
  • Pellaea macrophylla Fée
  • Pellaea viridis (Forssk.) Prantl
  • Pellaea viridis var. canonica (Kunze) Verdc.
  • Pellaea viridis var. glauca Sim
  • Pellaea viridis var. incisa Christ

and 8 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 CHVI23. 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.