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Dendrocnide moroides
Also called Gympie Gympie, Gympie Stinging Tree, Moonlighter
Gimpi gimpi is a straggly, stinging shrub or small tree of rainforest edges in eastern Australia, notorious for a painful, long-lasting sting. It is rarely grown deliberately and should be handled only with great care.
Dendrocnide moroides, commonly known in Australia as the stinging tree, stinging bush, or gympie-gympie, and also sometimes referred to as the suicide plant, is a plant in the nettle family Urticaceae found in rainforest areas of Queensland and New South Wales in Australia. It is notorious for its extremely painful and long-lasting sting. The common name gympie-gympie comes from the language of the indigenous Gubbi Gubbi people of south-eastern Queensland.
D. moroides is notorious for its extremely painful sting which may leave victims suffering for weeks or even months. It is reputed to be the most venomous plant in Australia, if not the world. After contact with the plant the victim will feel an immediate severe burning and stinging at the site of contact, which then intensifies further over the next 20 to 30 minutes and will last from hours to several days before subsiding. During this time the victim may get little sleep because of the intensity of the pain. In severe cases, it may cause hives, and the lymph glands under the arms may swell and become painful. There have been rare cases of hospitalization.
The species occurs in and near rainforest from the top of Cape York Peninsula south along the east coast to northern New South Wales; it is common in north Queensland but rare in New South Wales, where it is listed as an endangered species. It has also been recorded from the eastern part of East Timor, and from the island of Yamdena in the Tanimbar Islands.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Dendrocnide moroides by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
