Polylepis australisBitter

WFO wfo-0001004595 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Polylepis australis, photographed by Hugo Hulsberg
fig. a Hugo Hulsberg, CC0 1.0 / 2021-09-22 / obs. 177371159
Polylepis australis, photographed by Hugo Hulsberg
fig. b Hugo Hulsberg, CC0 1.0 / obs. 177370159
Polylepis australis, photographed by Ezequiel Vera
fig. c Ezequiel Vera, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 60896875
Polylepis australis, photographed by aacocucci
fig. d aacocucci, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 9914472
Polylepis australis, photographed by Hugo Hulsberg
fig. e Hugo Hulsberg, CC0 1.0 / obs. 157010207
Polylepis australis, photographed by Facundo Chieffo
fig. f Facundo Chieffo, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 174613611
Polylepis australis, photographed by Nicolas Olejnik
fig. g Nicolas Olejnik, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 1993206
Polylepis australis, photographed by aacocucci
fig. h aacocucci, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 29812957

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
03228764
Filed as
Polylepis australis Bitter
Det. by
B. B. Simpson 1978-01-01
Collected
F. Kurtz 1890-11-21
Origin
AR
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 2 botanical countries

Regions where Polylepis australis is native: Argentina Northeast, Argentina Northwest Argentina NortheastArgentina Northwest
Native distribution of Polylepis australis, 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
Argentina Northeast AGE SOUTHERN AMERICA
Argentina Northwest AGW

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 139 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -4.8 °C -0.8 °C 4.4 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 15.6 °C 19.9 °C 26.1 °C
Annual rainfall 1,198 mm 1,320 mm 1,781 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 40 mm 44 mm 53 mm

It is found where winters bring light frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 139 research-grade observations of Polylepis australis 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 20 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.

  • Polylepis australis subvar. breviuscula Bitter
  • Polylepis australis subvar. gracilescens Bitter
  • Polylepis australis subvar. latifrons Bitter
  • Polylepis australis subvar. majuscula Bitter
  • Polylepis australis var. crenulata Bitter
  • Polylepis australis var. fuscitomentella (Kuntze) Bitter
  • Polylepis australis var. glabra (Kuntze) Bitter
  • Polylepis australis var. glabrescens (Kuntze) Bitter
  • Polylepis australis var. latifoliolata Bitter
  • Polylepis australis var. oblanceolata Bitter
  • Polylepis australis var. subcalva Bitter
  • Polylepis australis var. tucumanica Bitter
  • Polylepis racemosa f. albotomentella Kuntze
  • Polylepis racemosa var. albotomentella Kuntze
  • Polylepis racemosa var. fuscotomentella Kuntze
  • Polylepis racemosa var. glabra Kuntze
  • Polylepis racemosa var. glabrescens Kuntze
  • Polylepis racemosa var. pubescens Kuntze
  • Polylepis racemosa var. pubinervia Kuntze
  • Polylepis racemosa var. subresinosa Kuntze

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.