Doryanthes excelsa, Royal National Park NSW 2233, Australia

Doryanthes excelsa Corrêa

Gymea Lily, Gymea-lily, giant-lily

Climate known 63 photographs

Every figure on this page is derived from public data by a stated rule and says its source; nothing here is written by a person or a model, except the Wikipedia passage, which is quoted and marked as such. How it is made.

Summary

Doryanthes excelsa, commonly known as the gymea lily, is a flowering plant in the family Doryanthaceae that is endemic to coastal areas of New South Wales near Sydney. It has sword-like leaves more than 1 metre (3 ft) long and it grows a flower spike up to 6 metres (20 ft) high. The apex of the spike bears a large cluster of bright red flowers, each 10 centimetres (4 in) across. Its common name is derived from kai'mia in the indigenous Dharawal language. More on Wikipedia ›

The opening of Wikipedia, “Doryanthes excelsa”, CC BY-SA 4.0, quoted as written. Kept separate from everything derived here.

About the genus · Doryanthes

Doryanthes is the sole genus in the flowering plant family Doryanthaceae. The genus consists of two species, D. excelsa and D. palmeri, both endemic natives of the coast of Eastern Australia. Doryanthaceae is part of the order Asparagales.

Text from Wikipedia, “Doryanthes”, CC BY-SA 4.0, quoted as written.

Family

Doryanthaceae

Described by

Corrêa

Native to

New South Wales

Wild records

1154 in range· 951 open

At a glance

Warmest month

26°C

Jan, mean day; nights 19 °C (CHELSA)

Rain

1086mm/yr

12 wet months · peak Feb 138 mm (CHELSA)

Light

16–42DLI

mol/m²/day, winter to summer, open sky (CHELSA shortwave)

In short condensed by rule from the cultivation cards · not written by a person

Rain rule: no season, 70% of the rain takes 8 months (May to December in the northern hemisphere). Habitat rain 1086 mm a year, wettest February at 138 mm, driest September at 60 mm (habitat calendar, southern hemisphere). Open sky over the habitat: 16 to 42 mol/m²/day. Cold floor 4.8 °C (1st-percentile habitat night, NASA POWER).

Each sentence is one card's own one-line form, written by the same rule as the card (Its year, Rain, Light, Temperature); the note cannot say what a card does not. Months are given for the northern hemisphere (set your site in Settings to change this), and the habitat's own alongside. The cards · the figures.

Also known as Agave australis (Haw.) Steud.; Furcraea australis Haw.

Cultivation

Its year Rain rule: no season, 70% of the rain takes 8 months (May to December in the northern hemisphere).

This species’ habitat figures, and what two fixed rules read from them.

The rain rule reads no season: 70% of the year's rain (814 mm of 1086 mm) takes 8 months, November to June. Mean temperature moves 10.6 °C between the warmest and coldest month. Months are the habitat's, southern hemisphere; shifted six months for a northern-hemisphere collection: May to December.

Read from the median year of CHELSA monthly rainfall and mean temperature across the envelope cells: the rain rule takes the smallest set of months carrying 70% of the rain and calls it winter when its mean is more than half a degree below the year's, summer when more than that above, and neither in between; the temperature rule, used only under 120 mm, names the cooler six months when they are at least a degree cooler than the other six. Months are shifted for the other hemisphere only where the temperature curve gives a season to reverse. A reading of the curves, not an observation of the plant.

Rain Habitat rain 1086 mm a year, wettest February at 138 mm, driest September at 60 mm (habitat calendar, southern hemisphere).

This species’ habitat figures, with their source.

1086 mm a year at the habitat, 814 mm of it November to June. Wettest month February at 138 mm, driest September at 60 mm. Across the envelope cells the year's total runs 871 mm to 1262 mm (10th to 90th percentile of each cell's own year) (median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA; habitat calendar, southern hemisphere).

CHELSA monthly precipitation, median year across the envelope cells. The rain that falls where the species is recorded; nothing about how the plant takes water.

Light Open sky over the habitat: 16 to 42 mol/m²/day.

This species’ habitat figures, with their source.

Open sky over the habitat: 16 to 42 mol/m²/day across the year (daily light integral, median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA; the lowest 10th-percentile month across the cells is 16, the highest 90th-percentile month 43).

CHELSA shortwave radiation at each envelope cell, a daily-mean flux taken to a daily total and converted at 2.07 mol of PAR per MJ. The sky over the habitat, measured; what reaches a plant under a rock, a shrub or a shade cloth is not.

Warmth and air Cold floor 4.8 °C (1st-percentile habitat night, NASA POWER).

This species’ habitat figures, with their source.

Temperature

Coldest: the 1st-percentile night over 44 years at the typical cell is 4.8 °C, the absolute minimum 1.3 °C, no frost in 44 years (NASA POWER daily minima). Warmest: the 99th-percentile day is 35.9 °C. Monthly means: coldest night 8.0 °C in July (across the envelope cells 5.7 °C to 10.9 °C), warmest day 25.7 °C in January (median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA). Cold floor: 4.8 °C, which is the 1st-percentile night over 44 years at the typical cell (NASA POWER).

NASA POWER daily minima and maxima 1981–2024 at the typical cell, lapse-corrected to its elevation; CHELSA monthly means, median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA. The cold floor is the figure named in its sentence. Not a measured survival limit for any plant in a pot.

Humidity

Relative humidity at the habitat: 55 to 62% across the year (monthly means, median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA). A figure about the air, saying nothing about how the plant takes water.

CHELSA relative humidity, median year across the envelope cells.

The figures the cards read from are in Climate below, and where they came from in Natural habitat.

Climate across the habitat

day night rain 10th–90th percentile across 225 habitat cells cold quarter: the three months around the coldest night extremes over 44 years at the typical cell, marked at the edge: undated DLI, mol/m²/dayRH %each on its own scale

Figures by month

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Day °C	26 / 24–28	25 / 24–27	23 / 22–25	21 / 20–22	19 / 17–19	16 / 15–17	15 / 14–16	17 / 16–18	19 / 18–21	21 / 20–23	23 / 21–25	25 / 23–27
Night °C	19 / 18–20	19 / 18–20	17 / 16–19	15 / 13–17	12 / 10–15	9 / 7–12	8 / 6–11	9 / 7–12	11 / 9–13	13 / 12–15	15 / 14–17	17 / 16–19
Rain mm	91 / 74–103	138 / 112–158	102 / 84–120	114 / 81–136	96 / 67–125	92 / 62–115	66 / 49–80	65 / 48–79	60 / 49–67	81 / 69–91	97 / 82–111	84 / 75–100
DLI	41 / 40–42	36 / 35–37	30 / 30–31	24 / 24–25	18 / 18–19	16 / 16–16	18 / 18–18	24 / 24–24	31 / 31–32	37 / 37–38	40 / 39–41	42 / 41–43
RH %	61 / 58–63	62 / 59–64	61 / 59–63	60 / 59–62	59 / 58–61	58 / 57–60	57 / 56–58	55 / 54–56	55 / 54–57	57 / 55–58	59 / 57–61	60 / 57–61

Each figure is the median across the 225 grid cells holding the 1142 in-range records, with the 10th–90th percentile span across those cells after the slash where it differs. Extremes and elevation were read at the typical cell 2469:6623 (-33.475, 151.175). Over 44 years there: absolute minimum 1.3 °C, 1st-percentile night 4.8 °C, 99th-percentile day 35.9 °C. Normals: CHELSA V2.1 1981–2010 climatology, 0.05° cells (each the mean of ~36 1 km pixels). Envelope: median and 10th–90th percentile of each month across the 225 distinct grid cells holding the 1142 in-range records; extremes and elevation at the typical cell 2469:6623 (its coldest month's mean night nearest the median across cells); its position is the cell centre. Extremes: NASA POWER (MERRA-2) daily 1981–2024, cell -33.50_151.250, lapse-corrected +10 m at 6.5 °C/km. Elevation: ETOPO 2022, 109 m (cell mean).

Natural habitat

Native range as published by WCVP; the marker is where the records are densest and decides nothing: the climate was read across every in-range record's cell, not at the marker.

Openly licensed records inside the range, framed on where they fall.

NativeNew South Wales

Kew's description“perennial or subshrub” · “subtropical”· quoted from WCVP, RBG Kew (CC BY 4.0); not derived here

Map marker-33.873, 151.091 · in the densest population, 1128 records (98% of those in range)

Evidence usedThe map marker and the climate envelope rest on all 1154 georeferenced records inside the native range; the map shows only the 951 openly licensed ones, which alone would put the marker 1 km away. 25 records outside the range (gardens, roadsides, misidentifications) ignored. 12 in-range records are placed to worse than 10 km and stay on the map but off the climate.

The map markerthe map marker: the openly licensed record nearest the middle of the densest 1° population of the 1154 in-range records; it decides nothing.

Photographs

Photographs: (c) Tim, some rights reserved (CC BY) (3); (c) ronavery, some rights reserved (CC BY) (3); (c) Mike Bowie, some rights reserved (CC BY) (2).

Photographs: iNaturalist did not answer when this page was built; what is shown came from the sources that did.

Papers naming this species

Works whose title or abstract names Doryanthes excelsa, most cited first, from OpenAlex (CC0). A mention, not a cultivation source: nothing on this page is drawn from them.

A portable reflectance-absorptance-transmittance meter for photosynthetic work on vascular plant leaves

Raymond J. Ritchie, John W. Runcie (2014) · Photosynthetica

Flowering, seed dispersal, seed predation and seedling recruitment in two pyrogenic flowering resprouters

Andrew J. Denham, Tony D. Auld (2002) · Australian Journal of Botany

Effects of fire season on the reproductive success of the post-fire flowerer Doryanthes excelsa

Ruby Paroissien, Mark K. J. Ooi (2021) · Environmental and Experimental Botany

Comparison of microhabitat use in young regrowth and unlogged forest by the eastern pygmy-possum (Cercartetus nanus)

Bradley Law, Mark Chidel, Alf Britton, Caragh G. Threlfall (2017) · Australian Mammalogy

Micropropagation of Gymea Lily (Doryanthes excelsa Corrêa) from New South Wales, Australia

Adam Dimech, Rob Cross, Rebecca Ford, P. W. J. Taylor (2007) · Plant Cell Tissue and Organ Culture (PCTOC)

Doryanthes excelsa and Rafflesia arnoldii: two “swagger prints” by Edward Smith Weddell (1796–1858), and the work of the Weddell family of engravers (1814–1852)

H. J. Noltie (2014) · Archives of Natural History

Population diversity of Doryanthes excelsa (Doryanthaceae) in eastern Australia

Adam Dimech, Peter K. Ades, P. W. J. Taylor, Robert G. Cross (2009) · Publication Server of Goethe University Frankfurt am Main (Goethe University Frankfurt)

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