Hymenophyllum tunbrigense(L.) Sm.

Tunbridge filmy fern

WFO wfo-0001107541 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Hymenophyllum tunbrigense, photographed by José Luis Camaño
fig. a José Luis Camaño, CC0 1.0 / 2022-06-04 / obs. 204935035

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
K000889240
Filed as
Hymenophyllum tunbrigense (L.) Sm.
Det. by
Beentje, H.J.
Collected
Pocs, T.; Nchimbi, K.B.G. 1970-11-15
Origin
TZ
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 Hymenophyllum tunbrigense is native: Azores, Canary Is., Cape Provinces, Eswatini, Free State, Gabon, Kenya, KwaZulu-Natal, Madagascar, Madeira, Malawi, Mozambique, Northern Provinces, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Tristan da Cunha, Türkiye, Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, Spain Cape ProvincesEswatiniFree StateGabonKenyaKwaZulu-NatalMadagascarMalawiMozambiqueNorthern ProvincesTanzaniaZimbabweTürkiyeBelgiumFranceGermanyIrelandItalySpain AzoresCanary Is.MadeiraTristan da Cunha
Native distribution of Hymenophyllum tunbrigense, 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
Azores AZO AFRICA
Canary Is. CNY
Cape Provinces CPP
Eswatini SWZ
Free State OFS
Gabon GAB
Kenya KEN
KwaZulu-Natal NAT
Madagascar MDG
Madeira MDR
Malawi MLW
Mozambique MOZ
Northern Provinces TVL
Tanzania TAN
Zimbabwe ZIM
Belgium BGM EUROPE
France FRA
Germany GER
Great Britain GRB
Ireland IRE
Italy ITA
Spain SPA
Tristan da Cunha TDC ANTARCTICA
Türkiye TUR ASIA-TEMPERATE

Not drawn on the map: Great Britain. 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 924 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 1.5 °C 6.7 °C 12.2 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 16.4 °C 21.1 °C 24.3 °C
Annual rainfall 657 mm 1,487 mm 2,523 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 104 mm 187 mm 361 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 924 research-grade observations of Hymenophyllum tunbrigense 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.

  • Hymenophyllum alatum Willd.
  • Hymenophyllum dregeanum C.Presl
  • Hymenophyllum fucoides var. frigidum Liebm.
  • Hymenophyllum repens Dulac
  • Hymenophyllum thomassetii C.H.Wright
  • Hymenophyllum tunbridgense Sm.
  • Hymenophyllum tunbrigense var. asperulum (Kunze) Diem & J.S.Licht.
  • Hymenophyllum tunbrigense var. tunbrigense
  • Meringium tunbridgense Copel.
  • Trichomanes pulchellum Salisb.
  • Trichomanes tunbrigense 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.