Thrinax radiataLodd. ex Schult. & Schult.f.

Florida thatch palm

WFO wfo-0000323226 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Thrinax radiata, photographed by Alexis López Hernández
fig. a Alexis López Hernández, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-04-14 / obs. 201421468
Thrinax radiata, photographed by Alexis López Hernández
fig. b Alexis López Hernández, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201429904
Thrinax radiata, photographed by Lindsey Salmonson
fig. c Lindsey Salmonson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 177797660
Thrinax radiata, photographed by Ben Costamagna
fig. d Ben Costamagna, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 168682875
Thrinax radiata, photographed by caymanmatt
fig. e caymanmatt, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 152272240
Thrinax radiata, photographed by Diego Blanco
fig. f Diego Blanco, CC0 1.0 / obs. 140546993
Thrinax radiata, photographed by Diego Blanco
fig. g Diego Blanco, CC0 1.0 / obs. 139907185
Thrinax radiata, photographed by Kathy Richardson
fig. h Kathy Richardson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 140143061

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
85648
Filed as
Thrinax radiata Lodd. ex Schult. & Schult.f.
Det. by
A. J. Henderson 1995-01-01
Collected
M. J. Balick 1993-03-21
Origin
BZ
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 10 botanical countries

Regions where Thrinax radiata is native: Florida, Mexico Southeast, Bahamas, Belize, Cayman Is., Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua FloridaMexico SoutheastBelizeCubaDominican RepublicHaitiHondurasNicaragua BahamasCayman Is.
Native distribution of Thrinax radiata, 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
Bahamas BAH SOUTHERN AMERICA
Belize BLZ
Cayman Is. CAY
Cuba CUB
Dominican Republic DOM
Haiti HAI
Honduras HON
Nicaragua NIC
Florida FLA NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Southeast MXT

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 1,343 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 18.6 °C 22.2 °C 24.0 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 28.5 °C 29.2 °C 32.4 °C
Annual rainfall 980 mm 1,340 mm 1,739 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 103 mm 151 mm 170 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 1,343 research-grade observations of Thrinax radiata 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 16 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.

  • Coccothrinax martii (Griseb.) Becc.
  • Coccothrinax radiata (Lodd. ex Schult. & Schult.f.) Sarg.
  • Coccothrinax radiata (Lodd. ex Schult. & Schult.f.) Sarg. ex K.Schum.
  • Porothrinax pumilio H.Wendl. ex Griseb.
  • Thrinax aurata Kunth
  • Thrinax elegans Schult. & Schult.f.
  • Thrinax elegantissima hort. ex Hook.f.
  • Thrinax ferruginea Lodd. ex Mart.
  • Thrinax floridana Sarg.
  • Thrinax gracilis Schult. & Schult.f.
  • Thrinax maritima Lodd. ex Mart.
  • Thrinax martii Griseb.
  • Thrinax mexicana Lodd. ex Mart.
  • Thrinax montana Lodd. ex Mart.
  • Thrinax pumilio Lodd. ex Schult. & Schult.f.
  • Thrinax wendlandiana Becc.

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. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. 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.