Pilea platanifloraC.H.Wright

WFO wfo-0001223990 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Pilea plataniflora, photographed by Jacy Chen
fig. a Jacy Chen, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-10 / obs. 197005028
Pilea plataniflora, photographed by Jacy Chen
fig. b Jacy Chen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 165314189
Pilea plataniflora, photographed by Cheng-Te Hsu
fig. c Cheng-Te Hsu, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 124933327
Pilea plataniflora, photographed by Jacy Chen
fig. d Jacy Chen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 130228749
Pilea plataniflora, photographed by Jacy Chen
fig. e Jacy Chen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 130968359
Pilea plataniflora, photographed by agujaceratops
fig. f agujaceratops, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 57968683
Pilea plataniflora, photographed by agujaceratops
fig. g agujaceratops, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 57965952
Pilea plataniflora, photographed by Jacy Chen
fig. h Jacy Chen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 105771932

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 7 botanical countries

Regions where Pilea plataniflora is native: China North-Central, China South-Central, China Southeast, Hainan, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam China North-CentralChina South-CentralChina SoutheastHainanTaiwanThailandVietnam
Native distribution of Pilea plataniflora, 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
China North-Central CHN ASIA-TEMPERATE
China South-Central CHC
China Southeast CHS
Hainan CHH
Taiwan TAI
Thailand THA ASIA-TROPICAL
Vietnam VIE

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 400 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 2.3 °C 8.8 °C 13.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 20.1 °C 26.2 °C 29.6 °C
Annual rainfall 2,709 mm 3,290 mm 4,424 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 146 mm 269 mm 456 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 400 research-grade observations of Pilea plataniflora 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 8 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.

  • Pilea blinii H.Lév.
  • Pilea dielsiana Hand.-Mazz.
  • Pilea kankaoensis Hayata
  • Pilea langsonensis Gagnep.
  • Pilea minute-pilosa Hayata
  • Pilea petelotii Gagnep.
  • Pilea plataniflora var. taitoensis (Hayata) S.S.Ying
  • Pilea taitoensis Hayata

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.