Cyathea arborea(L.) Sm.

West Indian treefern

WFO wfo-0001108904 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Cyathea arborea, photographed by Elliot Greiner
fig. a Elliot Greiner, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-03-04 / obs. 181646211
Cyathea arborea, photographed by Billy
fig. b Billy, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 176220893
Cyathea arborea, photographed by Michael Bakker Paiva
fig. c Michael Bakker Paiva, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 173158491
Cyathea arborea, photographed by ritirene
fig. d ritirene, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 169872558
Cyathea arborea, photographed by Daniel Cahen
fig. e Daniel Cahen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 60858882
Cyathea arborea, photographed by Daniel Cahen
fig. f Daniel Cahen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 60878870
Cyathea arborea, photographed by Daniel Cahen
fig. g Daniel Cahen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 60878985
Cyathea arborea, photographed by botanygirl
fig. h botanygirl, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 14134190

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 Cyathea arborea is native: Colombia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Haiti, Jamaica, Leeward Is., Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Windward Is. ColombiaCubaDominican RepublicEcuadorHaitiJamaicaPuerto RicoVenezuela Leeward Is.Windward Is.
Native distribution of Cyathea arborea, 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
Colombia CLM SOUTHERN AMERICA
Cuba CUB
Dominican Republic DOM
Ecuador ECU
Haiti HAI
Jamaica JAM
Leeward Is. LEE
Puerto Rico PUE
Venezuela VEN
Windward Is. WIN

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 503 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 15.4 °C 19.8 °C 22.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 25.0 °C 27.5 °C 30.4 °C
Annual rainfall 1,450 mm 2,500 mm 3,147 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 177 mm 340 mm 514 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 503 research-grade observations of Cyathea arborea 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 11 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.

  • Cormophyllum arboreum (L.) Newman
  • Cyathea arborea var. pusilla Bosco
  • Cyathea arborea var. regnellii Baker
  • Cyathea barbata Bory; Kuhn
  • Cyathea guadalupensis Spreng.
  • Cyathea serra Willd.
  • Disphenia arborea (L.) C.Presl
  • Hemitelia arborea (L.) Fée
  • Hemitelia serra Desv.
  • Nephelea arborea (L.) Sehnem
  • Polypodium arboreum L.

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.