Heterocladium macouniiBest

Macoun's heterocladium moss

WFO wfo-0001174670 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Heterocladium macounii, photographed by Braden J. Judson
fig. a Braden J. Judson, CC0 1.0 / 2022-05-17 / obs. 198903084

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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 193 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -2.0 °C 0.5 °C 4.6 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 16.0 °C 21.4 °C 24.9 °C
Annual rainfall 1,376 mm 2,843 mm 4,097 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 127 mm 268 mm 439 mm

It is found where winters bring light frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 193 research-grade observations of Heterocladium macounii 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 Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.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 5 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.

  • Heterocladium heteropterioides Best
  • Heterocladium heteropterioides var. filescens Best
  • Heterocladium heteropterum subsp. macounii (Best) P.Allorge
  • Heterocladium heteropterum subsp. macounii (Best) Dixon
  • Heterocladium heteropterum var. filescens (Best) Grout

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.

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. It has no native range either: Kew's checklist does not cover this taxon.