Ophioglossum thermaleKom.

WFO wfo-0001115187 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 6 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 6 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.

Ophioglossum thermale, photographed by chiuluan
fig. a chiuluan, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-04-16 / obs. 188460223
Ophioglossum thermale, photographed by chiuluan
fig. b chiuluan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 183546455
Ophioglossum thermale, photographed by chiuluan
fig. c chiuluan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 167706555
Ophioglossum thermale, photographed by chiuluan
fig. d chiuluan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 189789996
Ophioglossum thermale, photographed by chiuluan
fig. e chiuluan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 188460222
Ophioglossum thermale, photographed by chiuluan
fig. f chiuluan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 189789972
Ophioglossum thermale, photographed by chiuluan
fig. g chiuluan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 180442007
Ophioglossum thermale, photographed by 呂一起(Lyu yi-chi)
fig. h 呂一起(Lyu yi-chi), CC BY 4.0 / obs. 32001652

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
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
03866242
Filed as
Ophioglossum thermale Kom.
Det. by
not recorded on this sheet
Collected
not recorded
Origin
not recorded
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. We link to the digitised sheet rather than rehosting it, because the holding institutions do not serve their images to third parties reliably and we are not going to show you a picture we cannot actually deliver. 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 sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 14 botanical countries

Regions where Ophioglossum thermale is native: Amur, China North-Central, China South-Central, China Southeast, Inner Mongolia, Japan, Kamchatka, Korea, Manchuria, Nansei-shoto, Primorye, Tadzhikistan, Taiwan, Uzbekistan AmurChina North-CentralChina South-CentralChina SoutheastInner MongoliaJapanKamchatkaManchuriaPrimoryeTadzhikistanTaiwanUzbekistan KoreaNansei-shoto
Native distribution of Ophioglossum thermale, 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
Amur AMU ASIA-TEMPERATE
China North-Central CHN
China South-Central CHC
China Southeast CHS
Inner Mongolia CHI
Japan JAP
Kamchatka KAM
Korea KOR
Manchuria CHM
Nansei-shoto NNS
Primorye PRM
Tadzhikistan TZK
Taiwan TAI
Uzbekistan UZB

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 43 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -20.3 °C 11.3 °C 15.7 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 15.2 °C 28.4 °C 30.7 °C
Annual rainfall 982 mm 2,769 mm 3,745 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 109 mm 352 mm 603 mm

It is found where winters are severely cold. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 43 research-grade observations of Ophioglossum thermale 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 9 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.

  • Ophioglossum angustatum Maxon
  • Ophioglossum bucharicum O.Fedtsch. & B.Fedtsch.
  • Ophioglossum japonicum Prantl
  • Ophioglossum nipponicum Miyabe & Kudô
  • Ophioglossum savatieri Nakai
  • Ophioglossum thermale var. bucharicum H.P.Fuchs
  • Ophioglossum thermale var. nipponicum (Miyabe & Kudo) Nishida
  • Ophioglossum vulgatum var. bucharicum O.Fedtsch. & B.Fedtsch.
  • Ophioglossum vulgatum var. thermale (Kom.) C.Chr.

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.