79 photographs › At a glance
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Summary
Pleurophyllum hookeri, also known as the silver-leaf daisy or sage-green rosette herb, is a herbaceous plant in the family Asteraceae, a megaherb native to the subantarctic Auckland and Campbell Islands of New Zealand and Australia’s Macquarie Island. It grows up to 900 mm in height and has crimson button flowers and long, silky, silver leaves, with a large carrot-like tuber and long roots. It also has the unusual feature of a vertically contractile stem, most of which is underground, which serves to keep the leaf rosette close to the ground surface and the plant anchored securely against the very strong winds typical of subantarctic islands. Prior to the successful eradication of introduced mammals on Macquarie Island in 2011, it had been threatened there by black rats and European rabbits.
Quoted from Wikipedia, "Pleurophyllum hookeri", CC BY-SA 4.0.
Cultivation
Seasons
The rain rule reads no short rainy season: 70% of the median year's rain (964 mm of 1,247 mm) takes 9 months, January to June and August to October. Mean temperature moves 3.3 °C between the warmest and coldest month. Months are the habitat's, southern hemisphere. The temperature curve moves under 4 °C between the warmest and coldest month, where the shift rule does not apply, so they are not shifted for a collection elsewhere.
Rain
1,247 mm in the median year at the habitat, 964 mm of it January to June and August to October. Wettest month March at 121 mm, driest month November at 92 mm. Across the grid cells of the range the year's total runs 1,094 mm to 1,428 mm, the 10th to 90th percentile of each cell's own year. The median of the cells' own yearly totals, 1,249 mm, is the year's rain at the top of the page; the 1,247 mm here is the median year's, the twelve monthly medians added, which the rain rule reads. Habitat calendar, southern hemisphere; median year across the grid cells of the range, CHELSA.
Light
Open sky over the habitat: 3 to 37 mol/m²/day across the year (daily light integral, median year across the grid cells of the range, CHELSA; the lowest 10th-percentile month across the cells is 2, the highest 90th-percentile month 38).
Warmth and air
Monthly means: the coldest month's mean nightly low 4.1 °C in June, July, August and September (across the grid cells of the range 2.0 °C to 5.3 °C), the warmest month's mean daily high 9.3 °C in February (median year across the grid cells of the range, CHELSA). Cold floor: none read. The nearest figure is 4.1 °C, the coldest month's mean nightly low, June, July, August and September, in the median year (CHELSA); a month's mean of its nightly lows is warmer than the nights a floor is read from. The daily extremes were read at a weather cell that is mostly sea and are not used.
Relative humidity at the habitat: 66 to 69% across the year (monthly means, median year across the grid cells of the range, CHELSA). A figure about the air, saying nothing about how the plant takes water.
How this section is made
Each card states this species' habitat figures with their sources, and what two fixed rules read from them; nothing here says what the plant does, wants or tolerates. The rules · the terms.
Seasons. Read from the median year of CHELSA monthly rainfall and mean temperature across the grid cells of the range: 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 moves 4 °C or more and the habitat lies 10° or more from the equator. A reading of the curves, not an observation of the plant.
Rain. CHELSA monthly precipitation, median year across the grid cells of the range. The rain that falls where the species is recorded; nothing about how the plant takes water.
Light. 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.
Temperature. CHELSA monthly means, median year across the grid cells of the range. No cold floor is read without a daily extremes series; the coldest month's mean nightly low named in its sentence is not one. Not a measured survival limit for any plant in a pot.
Humidity. CHELSA relative humidity, median year across the grid cells of the range.
Climate across the habitat
Habitat months, southern hemisphere
Mean daily high from 6 °C in Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep and Oct to 9 °C in Jan, Feb and Mar; mean nightly low from 4 °C in Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep and Oct to 8 °C in Jan and Feb. The cold quarter, Jul to Sep, is the three months around the coldest month's mean nightly low, centred on the 5 months in a row that tie for it. 1,247 mm of rain in the median year (the twelve monthly medians added), the wettest month Mar. The bands show the 10th to 90th percentile across 27 habitat cells. Beneath: daily light integral and relative humidity through the year, each on its own scale.
Figures by month
| Figure | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Day °C | 9 / 7–10 | 9 / 7–10 | 9 / 7–10 | 8 / 6–9 | 7 / 5–8 | 6 / 4–7 | 6 / 4–7 | 6 / 4–7 | 6 / 4–7 | 6 / 4–8 | 7 / 5–8 | 8 / 6–9 |
| Night °C | 8 / 5–9 | 8 / 6–9 | 7 / 5–8 | 6 / 4–7 | 5 / 3–6 | 4 / 2–5 | 4 / 2–5 | 4 / 2–5 | 4 / 2–5 | 4 / 2–6 | 5 / 3–6 | 6 / 4–7 |
| Rain mm | 108 / 94–136 | 103 / 90–114 | 121 / 108–132 | 115 / 102–127 | 111 / 97–136 | 100 / 87–112 | 94 / 82–107 | 104 / 91–114 | 102 / 87–125 | 100 / 87–119 | 92 / 81–121 | 97 / 88–116 |
| DLI | 33 / 33–34 | 26 / 25–28 | 17 / 16–19 | 10 / 9–11 | 5 / 4–6 | 3 / 2–4 | 4 / 3–5 | 8 / 7–10 | 15 / 14–17 | 25 / 23–26 | 33 / 32–34 | 37 / 35–38 |
| RH % | 69 / 67–71 | 69 / 66–70 | 68 / 66–70 | 68 / 65–69 | 67 / 65–69 | 66 / 64–67 | 66 / 64–68 | 66 / 64–68 | 66 / 64–68 | 66 / 64–68 | 67 / 65–68 | 68 / 66–70 |
The daily extremes were read at a NASA POWER cell that is 12% land: neither it nor the next candidates whose coldest month's mean nightly low is within 2 °C of the median across cells sit in a POWER cell that is mostly land, and the rule reads a cold floor only from a cell that is mostly land, so none is read for this species. Nor is the coldest month's mean nightly low taken as one: it is a mean of a month's lows, not its coldest night. What that cell gave over 44 years: absolute minimum -3.4 °C, 1st-percentile night 0.5 °C, 99th-percentile day 10.4 °C.
How this section is made
Natural habitat
How this section is made
Photographs
Photographs: (c) Jacob Littlejohn, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA) (2); (c) Genevieve Early, some rights reserved (CC BY) (3); (c) Flavien Saboureau, some rights reserved (CC BY).
Related
Similar habitat climate The 6 nearest by mean daily high, mean nightly low and rain, month by month. How.
Acaena minor Rosaceae Photo: CC BY-SA, Jacob Littlejohn
Azorella polaris Macquarie Island cabbage Photo: CC BY-SA, Jacob Littlejohn
Anisotome latifolia Campbell Island carrot Photo: CC BY-SA, Jacob Littlejohn
Bulbinella rossii Ross Lily Photo: CC0, author not stated
Myosotis capitata Boraginaceae Photo: CC BY, Saryu Mae 前 朝琉
Urtica australis Southern Nettle Photo: CC0, author not statedNames & registers
Also known as Pleurophyllum gilliesianum. (GBIF Backbone)
The record
Every figure here is derived from public data by a stated rule and names its source; nothing about this species is written for its page by a person or by AI, apart from the marked, credited quotations. How →
Where this page came from built 2026-10-22
gbif.species answeredasked 2026-10-22gbif.synonyms answeredasked 2026-10-22gbif.vernacular answeredasked 2026-10-22names fetched 2026-10-22wcvp.distribution answeredas of 2026-06-04gbif.occurrences answeredas of 2026-10-21GBIF occurrence download https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.hbdw64, of 2026-10-21climate answeredasked 2026-10-22climate.extremes answeredasked 2026-10-22NASA POWER (MERRA-2) daily 1981–2024, cell -52.50_169.375, lapse-corrected +180 m at 6.5 °C/km; read, and set aside: NASA POWER's cell is mostly sea (12% land), so no cold floor is shownwikidata answeredasked 2026-10-22wikipedia answeredasked 2026-10-22inat.photos.wild answeredasked 2026-10-22from iNaturalist's open data of 2026-09-27: research-grade observations with an open-licence photograph, the 24 whose photographs iNaturalist received last (the open data holds no votes); filled 2026-10-22inat.photos.cultivated not askedgbif.media answeredasked 2026-10-22openalex not askednot yet asked for this reference; a later fill takes the papers from OpenAlex's snapshotEvery source is recorded as having answered, reported nothing, refused, failed, not been asked, or answered twice where one answer is taken (“not taken: two items answered”), and, for a source asked when this page was built, when: the figures are as the source held them that day; a source read from a file (Kew's World Checklist, a GBIF download) says "as of" the file's day instead; a row carried from an earlier build of the page names that build instead. Only “nothing to report” is ever shown as an absence. Records came from 14 datasets via GBIF.org; each carries its own licence.