Dendrocnide moroides
species of flowering plant in the family Urticaceae
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.
Description
D. moroides is a straggly perennial shrub, usually flowering and fruiting when less than 3 m (10 ft) tall, but it may reach up to 10 m (33 ft) in height. It is superficially similar to Dendrocnide cordifolia, with the most obvious difference being the point of attachment of the petiole to the leaf blade—where D. moroides is peltate, i.e. the stalk attaches to the underside of the leaf and not at the edge, D. cordifolia is cordate. The stem, branches, petioles, leaves, and fruits are all covered in stinging hairs.
It has large, heart-shaped simple leaves about 12–22 cm (4+1⁄2–8+1⁄2 in) long and 11–18 cm (4+1⁄2–7 in) wide with toothed margins, a pointed tip and a cordate to obtuse base shape. There are six to eight pairs of lateral veins on either side of the midrib. The petiole (leaf stem) is quite long, about as long as the leaf blade itself, with stipules about 1–2 cm (1⁄2–3⁄4 in) long.
The public source identifies “Dendrocnide moroides” as species of flowering plant in the family Urticaceae. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Dendrocnide, moroides and species.
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The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q782859. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dendrocnide moroides” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.