Tapeinidium pinnatum(Cav.) C.Chr.

WFO wfo-0001107431 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 3 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 3 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.

Tapeinidium pinnatum, photographed by Cheng-Tao Lin
fig. a Cheng-Tao Lin, CC BY 4.0 / 2018-02-25 / obs. 14069886

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 10 botanical countries

Regions where Tapeinidium pinnatum is native: Nansei-shoto, Taiwan, Borneo, Jawa, Malaya, New Guinea, Philippines, Sulawesi, Sumatera, Thailand TaiwanBorneoJawaMalayaNew GuineaPhilippinesSulawesiSumateraThailand Nansei-shoto
Native distribution of Tapeinidium pinnatum, 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
Jawa JAW
Malaya MLY
New Guinea NWG
Philippines PHI
Sulawesi SUL
Sumatera SUM
Thailand THA
Nansei-shoto NNS ASIA-TEMPERATE
Taiwan TAI

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 76 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 16.4 °C 18.2 °C 20.3 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 26.6 °C 27.4 °C 29.1 °C
Annual rainfall 2,210 mm 2,769 mm 5,571 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 132 mm 247 mm 850 mm

It is not found anywhere that gets close to freezing. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 76 research-grade observations of Tapeinidium pinnatum 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 12 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.

  • Davallia firmula Baker
  • Davallia flagellifera Wall. ex Hook. & Grev.
  • Davallia pinnata Cav.
  • Davallia serrata Roxb.
  • Lindsaea pinnata (Cav.) Mett. ex Kuhn
  • Microlepia firmula (Baker) C.Chr.
  • Microlepia pinnata J.Sm.
  • Saccoloma pinnatum (Cav.) C.Presl
  • Tapeinidium firmulum (Baker) C.Chr.
  • Tapeinidium pinnatum var. pinnatum
  • Wibelia javae Fée
  • Wibelia pinnata (Cav.) Fée

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.