Habenaria filicornisLindl.

WFO wfo-0000977611 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Habenaria filicornis, photographed by Mahomed Desai
fig. a Mahomed Desai, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-01-27 / obs. 111273725
Habenaria filicornis, photographed by Antoinette Eyssell Knox
fig. b Antoinette Eyssell Knox, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 61334365
Habenaria filicornis, photographed by Manuel R Popp
fig. c Manuel R Popp, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 179496408
Habenaria filicornis, photographed by Andrew Hankey
fig. d Andrew Hankey, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 114460366
Habenaria filicornis, photographed by Sam McCarren
fig. e Sam McCarren, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 113258014
Habenaria filicornis, photographed by Antoinette Eyssell Knox
fig. f Antoinette Eyssell Knox, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 62585375
Habenaria filicornis, photographed by Alan Manson
fig. g Alan Manson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 187683698
Habenaria filicornis, photographed by grabbarg
fig. h grabbarg, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 131457817

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
K000415640
Filed as
Habenaria filicornis Lindl.
Det. by
Summerhayes
Collected
Welwitsch
Origin
AO
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 24 botanical countries

Regions where Habenaria filicornis is native: Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Cameroon, DR Congo, Eritrea, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Kenya, KwaZulu-Natal, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Northern Provinces, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Sudan-South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe AngolaBotswanaBurundiCameroonDR CongoEritreaEswatiniEthiopiaGhanaGuineaIvory CoastKenyaKwaZulu-NatalMalawiMozambiqueNigeriaNorthern ProvincesRwandaSierra LeoneSudan-South SudanTanzaniaUgandaZambiaZimbabwe
Native distribution of Habenaria filicornis, 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.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Angola ANG AFRICA
Botswana BOT
Burundi BUR
Cameroon CMN
DR Congo ZAI
Eritrea ERI
Eswatini SWZ
Ethiopia ETH
Ghana GHA
Guinea GUI
Ivory Coast IVO
Kenya KEN
KwaZulu-Natal NAT
Malawi MLW
Mozambique MOZ
Nigeria NGA
Northern Provinces TVL
Rwanda RWA
Sierra Leone SIE
Sudan-South Sudan SUD
Tanzania TAN
Uganda UGA
Zambia ZAM
Zimbabwe ZIM

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 113 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 1.1 °C 3.8 °C 10.6 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 21.8 °C 24.7 °C 28.2 °C
Annual rainfall 678 mm 946 mm 1,247 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 5 mm 43 mm 95 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 113 research-grade observations of Habenaria filicornis 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.

  • Habenaria chlorotica Rchb.f.
  • Habenaria deflexa Hochst. ex Kraenzl.
  • Habenaria erythraeae Rolfe
  • Habenaria filicornis var. chlorotica (Rchb.f.) Geerinck
  • Habenaria moratii Szlach. & Olszewski
  • Habenaria natalensis Rchb.f.
  • Habenaria pertenuis Kraenzl.
  • Habenaria spiranthes Rchb.f.
  • Habenaria tridactyla A.Rich.
  • Habenaria wilmsiana Kraenzl.
  • Orchis filicornis Thonn.

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.