Dendrocnide meyeniana

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Dendrocnide meyeniana, photographed by 葉子 — fig. b 葉子, CC0 1.0 / obs. 190581996

Dendrocnide meyeniana, photographed by Jacy Chen — fig. c Jacy Chen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 176574326

Dendrocnide meyeniana, photographed by Licheng Shih — fig. d Licheng Shih, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 175697897

Dendrocnide meyeniana, photographed by chiuluan — fig. f chiuluan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 172638568

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 2 botanical countries

Native distribution of Dendrocnide meyeniana, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Taiwan	TAI	ASIA-TEMPERATE
Philippines	PHI	ASIA-TROPICAL

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 1,330 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	10.0 °C	13.9 °C	19.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	26.7 °C	28.8 °C	30.2 °C
Annual rainfall	1,947 mm	2,903 mm	3,965 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	61 mm	135 mm	461 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 1,330 research-grade observations of Dendrocnide meyeniana 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 Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.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 23 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.

Dendrocnide batanensis (C.B.Rob.) Chew
Dendrocnide diffusa (C.B.Rob.) Chew
Dendrocnide meyeniana f. subglabra (Hayata) W.L.Chew
Dendrocnide platyphylla (Merr.) Chew
Dendrocnide subglabra (Hayata) Chew
Laportea batanensis C.B.Rob.
Laportea diffusa C.B.Rob.
Laportea gaudichaudiana Wedd.
Laportea leytensis C.B.Rob.
Laportea meyeniana Warb.
Laportea mindanaensis Warb.
Laportea platyphylla Merr.
Laportea pterostigma Wedd.
Laportea pterostigma f. subglabra (Hayata) H.L.Li
Laportea pterostigma var. subglabra (Hayata) T.S.Liu
Laportea subglabra Hayata
Urera gaudichaudiana Wedd.
Urtica ferox Blanco
Urtica meyeniana Walp.
Urtica umbellata Blanco
Urticastrum ferox A.Lyons
Urticastrum gaudichaudianum (Wedd.) Kuntze
Urticastrum pterostigma (Wedd.) Kuntze

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
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.