Ischaemum australeR.Br.

WFO wfo-0000876144 Accepted WFO 2026-06 6 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–f · 2 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 2 times, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Ischaemum australe, photographed by coenobita
fig. a coenobita, CC BY 4.0 / 2017-05-21 / obs. 25259440
Ischaemum australe, photographed by coenobita
fig. b coenobita, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 16105184
Ischaemum australe, photographed by coenobita
fig. c coenobita, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 25259444
Ischaemum australe, photographed by coenobita
fig. d coenobita, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 25259483
Ischaemum australe, photographed by coenobita
fig. e coenobita, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 25259493
Ischaemum australe, photographed by coenobita
fig. f coenobita, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 16105205

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 8 botanical countries

Regions where Ischaemum australe is native: Cambodia, New Guinea, Philippines, Vietnam, New South Wales, Northern Territory, Queensland, Western Australia CambodiaNew GuineaPhilippinesVietnamNew South WalesNorthern TerritoryQueenslandWestern Australia
Native distribution of Ischaemum australe, 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
Cambodia CBD ASIA-TROPICAL
New Guinea NWG
Philippines PHI
Vietnam VIE
New South Wales NSW AUSTRALASIA
Northern Territory NTA
Queensland QLD
Western Australia WAU

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 73 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 10.0 °C 14.2 °C 19.6 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 25.6 °C 29.1 °C 33.9 °C
Annual rainfall 960 mm 1,339 mm 2,755 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 11 mm 121 mm 222 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 73 research-grade observations of Ischaemum australe 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 12 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.

  • Andropogon cryptatherus Steud.
  • Andropogon villifer Steud.
  • Andropogon villiferus Steud.
  • Ischaemum aristatum var. cylindricum Pilg.
  • Ischaemum arundinaceum F.Muell. ex Benth.
  • Ischaemum australe var. arundinaceum (F.Muell. ex Benth.) B.K.Simon
  • Ischaemum australe var. semivestitum Domin
  • Ischaemum australe var. villosum (R.Br.) Benth.
  • Ischaemum barbatum var. arundinaceum (F.Muell.) Jansen
  • Ischaemum villosum R.Br.
  • Meoschium australe (R.Br.) P.Beauv. ex Roem. & Schult.
  • Meoschium villosum Beauv.

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.