Sceptridium australe(R.Br.) Lyon

WFO wfo-0000162748 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Sceptridium australe, photographed by Leon Perrie
fig. a Leon Perrie, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-06-21 / obs. 137824022
Sceptridium australe, photographed by naturewatchwidow
fig. b naturewatchwidow, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 12829779
Sceptridium australe, photographed by Basil Hooper
fig. c Basil Hooper, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 29248246
Sceptridium australe, photographed by Alice Shanks
fig. d Alice Shanks, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 5653626
Sceptridium australe, photographed by Leon Perrie
fig. e Leon Perrie, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 28086298
Sceptridium australe, photographed by Tim Park
fig. f Tim Park, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 2774517
Sceptridium australe, photographed by Nick Swanson
fig. g Nick Swanson, CC0 1.0 / obs. 57160647
Sceptridium australe, photographed by John Steel
fig. h John Steel, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 3419309

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
03880756
Filed as
Sceptridium australe Lyon
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. 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 13 botanical countries

Regions where Sceptridium australe is native: New Guinea, Chatham Is., New South Wales, New Zealand North, New Zealand South, Norfolk Is., Queensland, Victoria, Argentina Northeast, Argentina Northwest, Argentina South, Brazil Southeast, Chile South New GuineaNew South WalesNew Zealand NorthNew Zealand SouthQueenslandVictoriaArgentina NortheastArgentina NorthwestArgentina SouthBrazil SoutheastChile South Chatham Is.Norfolk Is.
Native distribution of Sceptridium 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. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Chatham Is. CTM AUSTRALASIA
New South Wales NSW
New Zealand North NZN
New Zealand South NZS
Norfolk Is. NFK
Queensland QLD
Victoria VIC
Argentina Northeast AGE SOUTHERN AMERICA
Argentina Northwest AGW
Argentina South AGS
Brazil Southeast BZL
Chile South CLS
New Guinea NWG ASIA-TROPICAL

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 108 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -3.3 °C 2.5 °C 10.4 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 16.6 °C 20.7 °C 29.6 °C
Annual rainfall 840 mm 1,365 mm 2,405 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 135 mm 237 mm 459 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 108 research-grade observations of Sceptridium 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 10 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.

  • Botrychium australe R.Br.
  • Botrychium australe subsp. negeri (Christ) R.T.Clausen
  • Botrychium australe var. erosum (Milde) Prantl
  • Botrychium australe var. millefolium (Hochst. ex Milde) Prantl
  • Botrychium erosum Milde
  • Botrychium millefolium Hochst.; Milde
  • Botrychium negeri Christ
  • Botrychium ternatum var. australe (R.Br.) Domin
  • Botrychium ternatum var. erosum (Milde) Milde
  • Sceptridium negeri (Christ) Holub

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.