The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Dichondra repens
Also called Tom Thumb, Creeping Dichondra, Dichondra, Kidneyweed, Wonder Lawn
In Singapore: Kidney Weed, Kidney Grass, Dewdrop Lawn, Wonder Lawn, Mercury Bay Weed (Grown in Singapore)
Dichondra repens is a low, creeping perennial with kidney-shaped, silky-hairy leaves, grown mainly as a lawn substitute or groundcover. It thrives in moist, fertile soil and tolerates light foot traffic better than many lawns.
Dichondra repens, commonly known as kidney weed, Mercury Bay weed, tom thumb, or yilibili in the Dharawal language, is a species of flowering plant in the family Convolvulaceae and is native to Australia, New Zealand, and the Indian Ocean islands, Mauritius, Réunion and Rodrigues. It is a perennial, herb with kidney-shaped to round leaves and small, greenish-yellow, star-shaped flowers.
This species is cultivated as an ornamental plant, and can be used as a lawn substitute or groundcover in gardens.
D. repens uses acylsugars as a chemical defence. Among these are acylated resin glycosides which synergize with antibiotics to reverse bacterial multidrug resistance (MDR).
Kidney weed is widespread in all Australian States and New Zealand, and occurs on Mauritius, Réunion and Rodrigues in the Indian Ocean. It grows in forest, woodland and grassland on clay or clay-based soils that are medium to high in nutrients, and is a weed of lawns. Associated species in New South Wales are river peppermint (Eucalyptus elata), thin-leaved stringybark (E. eugenioides), woollybutt (E. longifolia) and snow-in-summer (Melaleuca linariifolia).
Silver ponysfoot · Carolina ponysfoot · Asian ponysfoot · Ponysfoot
[Contains information from Leaf Area Index (LAI) and Heritage Trees from data.gov.sg (National Parks Board), made available under the terms of the Singapore Open Data Licence version 1.0]
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Dichondra repens 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.
