Tectaria zeilanica

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Tectaria zeilanica, photographed by Cheng-Te Hsu — fig. c Cheng-Te Hsu, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 139671801

Tectaria zeilanica, photographed by Jacy Chen — fig. e Jacy Chen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 123562821

Tectaria zeilanica, photographed by 國立臺灣博物館 — fig. g 國立臺灣博物館, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 60540791

Tectaria zeilanica, photographed by 呂一起(Lyu yi-chi) — fig. h 呂一起(Lyu yi-chi), CC BY 4.0 / obs. 163458682

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

Native distribution of Tectaria zeilanica, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Borneo	BOR	ASIA-TROPICAL
India	IND
Malaya	MLY
Sri Lanka	SRL
Thailand	THA
Vietnam	VIE
China South-Central	CHC	ASIA-TEMPERATE
China Southeast	CHS
Hainan	CHH
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 140 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	10.1 °C	12.5 °C	16.6 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	26.4 °C	28.9 °C	30.4 °C
Annual rainfall	2,115 mm	3,161 mm	3,798 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	83 mm	126 mm	622 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 140 research-grade observations of Tectaria zeilanica 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 11 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.

Acrostichum quercifolium Retz.
Campium zeilanicum (Houtt.) Copel.
Dendroglossa quercifolia Fée
Gymnopteris quercifolia (Retz.) Bernh.
Leptochilus quercifolius Fée
Leptochilus zeilanicus (Houtt.) C.Chr.
Onoclea quercifolia (Retz.) Willd.
Ophioglossum zeilanicum Houtt.
Osmunda trifida Jacq.
Polybotrya quercifolia (Retz.) Mett.
Quercifilix zeilanica (Houtt.) Copel.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
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.