Cordyline fruticosa(L.) A.Chev.

tiplant

WFO wfo-0000764243 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Cordyline fruticosa, photographed by Tyler Bishop
fig. a Tyler Bishop, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-16 / obs. 198445828
Cordyline fruticosa, photographed by Tyler Bishop
fig. b Tyler Bishop, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 198006233
Cordyline fruticosa, photographed by Kevin Faccenda
fig. c Kevin Faccenda, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 190573463
Cordyline fruticosa, photographed by Jon Sullivan
fig. d Jon Sullivan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199046972
Cordyline fruticosa, photographed by Kevin Faccenda
fig. e Kevin Faccenda, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 161659273
Cordyline fruticosa, photographed by Zoltán Stekkelpak
fig. f Zoltán Stekkelpak, CC0 1.0 / obs. 108445364
Cordyline fruticosa, photographed by cwarneke
fig. g cwarneke, CC0 1.0 / obs. 40107079
Cordyline fruticosa, photographed by bungelina
fig. h bungelina, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 38957808

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 11 botanical countries

Regions where Cordyline fruticosa is native: Bismarck Archipelago, New Guinea, Solomon Is., Queensland, Caroline Is., Fiji, Marianas, Marshall Is., Santa Cruz Is., Vanuatu, Wallis-Futuna Is. Bismarck ArchipelagoNew GuineaSolomon Is.QueenslandFiji Caroline Is.MarianasMarshall Is.VanuatuWallis-Futuna Is.
Native distribution of Cordyline fruticosa, 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
Caroline Is. CRL PACIFIC
Fiji FIJ
Marianas MRN
Marshall Is. MRS
Santa Cruz Is. SCZ
Vanuatu VAN
Wallis-Futuna Is. WAL
Bismarck Archipelago BIS ASIA-TROPICAL
New Guinea NWG
Solomon Is. SOL
Queensland QLD AUSTRALASIA

Not drawn on the map: Santa Cruz Is.. 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 1,584 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 12.0 °C 19.4 °C 23.3 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 21.7 °C 26.2 °C 30.7 °C
Annual rainfall 803 mm 2,139 mm 4,811 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 85 mm 286 mm 990 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 1,584 research-grade observations of Cordyline fruticosa 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 86 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.

  • Aletris chinensis Lam.
  • Calodracon heliconiifolia (Otto & A.Dietr.) Planch.
  • Calodracon nobilis Planch.
  • Calodracon sieberi (Kunth) Planch.
  • Calodracon terminalis (L.) Planch.
  • Convallaria fruticosa L.
  • Cordyline amabilis Cogn. & Marchal
  • Cordyline baptisti Cogn. & Marchal
  • Cordyline cheesemanii Kirk
  • Cordyline dennisoni André
  • Cordyline densicoma Linden & André
  • Cordyline eschscholziana Mart. ex Schult. & Schult.f.
  • Cordyline gloriosa Linden & André
  • Cordyline guilfoylei Hort.Linden ex Lem.
  • Cordyline hedychioides F.Muell.
  • Cordyline heliconiifolia Otto & A.Dietr.
  • Cordyline hendersonii Cogn. & Marchal
  • Cordyline javanica Klotzsch ex Kunth
  • Cordyline kewensis Sander
  • Cordyline metallica Dallière
  • Cordyline nobilis (Planch.) K.Koch
  • Cordyline reali (Linden & André) G.Nicholson
  • Cordyline regina Veitch ex Regel
  • Cordyline sepiaria Seem.

and 62 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. 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.