Christella jaculosa(Christ) Holttum

WFO wfo-0001125959 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 5 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 5 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.

Christella jaculosa, photographed by Jacy Chen
fig. a Jacy Chen, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-12-15 / obs. 173182690
Christella jaculosa, photographed by Jacy Chen
fig. b Jacy Chen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 172978060
Christella jaculosa, photographed by Jacy Chen
fig. c Jacy Chen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 109510235
Christella jaculosa, photographed by Jacy Chen
fig. d Jacy Chen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 63154714
Christella jaculosa, photographed by Jacy Chen
fig. e Jacy Chen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 177494541
Christella jaculosa, photographed by Jacy Chen
fig. f Jacy Chen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 172978071
Christella jaculosa, photographed by Jacy Chen
fig. g Jacy Chen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 173182700
Christella jaculosa, photographed by Jacy Chen
fig. h Jacy Chen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 177494581

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 10 botanical countries

Regions where Christella jaculosa is native: China South-Central, China Southeast, Japan, Nansei-shoto, Taiwan, Assam, East Himalaya, Myanmar, Nepal, Vietnam China South-CentralChina SoutheastJapanTaiwanAssamEast HimalayaMyanmarNepalVietnam Nansei-shoto
Native distribution of Christella jaculosa, 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
China South-Central CHC ASIA-TEMPERATE
China Southeast CHS
Japan JAP
Nansei-shoto NNS
Taiwan TAI
Assam ASS ASIA-TROPICAL
East Himalaya EHM
Myanmar MYA
Nepal NEP
Vietnam VIE

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 52 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 5.1 °C 11.1 °C 17.6 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 22.6 °C 27.6 °C 30.4 °C
Annual rainfall 2,461 mm 3,813 mm 4,965 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 110 mm 292 mm 829 mm

It is barely found anywhere that freezes. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 52 research-grade observations of Christella jaculosa 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.

  • Aspidium jaculosum Christ
  • Christella subarida (Tatew. & Tagawa) Holttum
  • Cyclosorus aureoglandulifer Ching
  • Cyclosorus aureolepidotus Ching
  • Cyclosorus houi Ching
  • Cyclosorus jaculosus (Christ) H.Itô
  • Cyclosorus pararidus Ching
  • Cyclosorus simillimus Ching
  • Cyclosorus sparsisorus K.H.Shing
  • Cyclosorus subaridus Tatew. & Tagawa
  • Cyclosorus sublaevis Ching
  • Dryopteris jaculosa (Christ) C.Chr.
  • Nephrodium jaculosum (Christ) Hayata
  • Thelypteris aureoglandulifera (Ching) Christenh.
  • Thelypteris houi (Ching) C.F.Reed
  • Thelypteris jaculosa (Christ) Panigrahi
  • Thelypteris subarida (Tatew. & Tagawa) C.F.Reed

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.