Lepironia articulata(Retz.) Domin

WFO wfo-0000459843 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Lepironia articulata, photographed by Ong Jyh Seng
fig. a Ong Jyh Seng, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-06-06 / obs. 203728266

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
Smithsonian, US National Herbarium
Accession
US 2129009
Filed as
Lepironia articulata (Retz.) Domin
Det. by
Strong, Mark T., (BOT), Smithsonian Institution - National Museum of Natural History (UNITED STATES)
Collected
T. G. Yuncker 1953-05-19
Origin
TO
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC0 1.0)

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 Lepironia articulata is native: Madagascar, China Southeast, Hainan, Nansei-shoto, Taiwan, Borneo, Cambodia, India, Laos, Malaya, Maluku, New Guinea, Sri Lanka, Sulawesi, Sumatera, Thailand, Vietnam, New South Wales, Northern Territory, Queensland, Caroline Is., Fiji, New Caledonia, Tonga MadagascarChina SoutheastHainanTaiwanBorneoCambodiaIndiaLaosMalayaMalukuNew GuineaSri LankaSulawesiSumateraThailandVietnamNew South WalesNorthern TerritoryQueenslandFijiNew Caledonia Nansei-shotoCaroline Is.Tonga
Native distribution of Lepironia articulata, 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
Borneo BOR ASIA-TROPICAL
Cambodia CBD
India IND
Laos LAO
Malaya MLY
Maluku MOL
New Guinea NWG
Sri Lanka SRL
Sulawesi SUL
Sumatera SUM
Thailand THA
Vietnam VIE
China Southeast CHS ASIA-TEMPERATE
Hainan CHH
Nansei-shoto NNS
Taiwan TAI
Caroline Is. CRL PACIFIC
Fiji FIJ
New Caledonia NWC
Tonga TON
New South Wales NSW AUSTRALASIA
Northern Territory NTA
Queensland QLD
Madagascar MDG AFRICA

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 353 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 5.9 °C 12.0 °C 24.3 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 25.0 °C 28.3 °C 34.3 °C
Annual rainfall 955 mm 1,369 mm 2,915 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 41 mm 153 mm 521 mm

It is barely found anywhere that freezes. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 353 research-grade observations of Lepironia articulata 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.

Named cultivars 1 recorded

Selections of Lepironia articulata that somebody named and propagated. A cultivar is not a botanical taxon: it is governed by the cultivated-plant code rather than the botanical one, so it appears in no taxonomic backbone, and it has no native range and no wild population of its own. These get no page here, because a cultivar has no photographs, no range and no flowering data of its own, and a page with none of those is not a page.

From Wikidata (CC0), joined to this species on its World Flora Online identifier, so the link to the parent is exact rather than a name match. This list is what is recorded in an openly licensed register; it is not every cultivar that exists, and for many genera it is not close. Why, and how far short it falls.

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.

  • Chondrachne articulata (Retz.) R.Br.
  • Choricarpha aphylla Boeckeler
  • Lepironia articulata var. capitata (F.Muell.) Domin
  • Lepironia compressa Boeckeler
  • Lepironia conifera (Poir.) Druce
  • Lepironia mucronata Rich.
  • Lepironia mucronata var. capitata F.Muell.
  • Lepironia mucronata var. compressa (Boeckeler) E.G.Camus
  • Restio articulatus Retz.
  • Scirpus conifer Poir.
  • Scirpus coniferus Poir.

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.