Actinidia chinensisPlanch.

Chinese gooseberrykiwikiwi fruit

WFO wfo-0000519189 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 7 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 7 times, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Actinidia chinensis, photographed by Duncan Cunningham
fig. a Duncan Cunningham, CC BY 4.0 / 2020-02-27 / obs. 62288903
Actinidia chinensis, photographed by Katja Schulz
fig. b Katja Schulz, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 43954859
Actinidia chinensis, photographed by Jacqui Geux
fig. c Jacqui Geux, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 3424927
Actinidia chinensis, photographed by Duncan Cunningham
fig. d Duncan Cunningham, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 62288900
Actinidia chinensis, photographed by Joe Dillon
fig. e Joe Dillon, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 117510567
Actinidia chinensis, photographed by Katja Schulz
fig. f Katja Schulz, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 63888851
Actinidia chinensis, photographed by Petr Harant
fig. g Petr Harant, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 168385639
Actinidia chinensis, photographed by Sofia Zvolanek
fig. h Sofia Zvolanek, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 115017417

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 4 botanical countries

Regions where Actinidia chinensis is native: China North-Central, China South-Central, China Southeast, Taiwan China North-CentralChina South-CentralChina SoutheastTaiwan
Native distribution of Actinidia chinensis, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
China North-Central CHN ASIA-TEMPERATE
China South-Central CHC
China Southeast CHS
Taiwan TAI

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Where it actually grows measured, from 332 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -5.2 °C 2.8 °C 9.9 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 18.2 °C 24.6 °C 31.6 °C
Annual rainfall 668 mm 1,405 mm 2,747 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 72 mm 226 mm 482 mm

It is found where winters bring hard frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 332 research-grade observations of Actinidia chinensis that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.

Also published as 17 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Actinidia chinensis f. chlorocarpa C.F.Liang
  • Actinidia chinensis f. jinggangshanensis C.F.Liang
  • Actinidia chinensis f. longipila C.F.Liang & R.Z.Wang
  • Actinidia chinensis f. rufopulpa C.F.Liang & R.H.Huang
  • Actinidia chinensis var. hispida C.F.Liang
  • Actinidia chinensis var. jinggangshanensis (C.F.Liang) C.F.Liang & A.R.Ferguson
  • Actinidia chinensis var. lageniformis S.Y.Wang & C.F.Chen
  • Actinidia chinensis var. latifolia A.Chev.
  • Actinidia chinensis var. nephrocarpa S.Y.Wang & C.F.Chen
  • Actinidia chinensis var. rufopulpa (C.F.Liang & R.H.Huang) C.F.Liang & A.R.Ferguson
  • Actinidia deliciosa (A.Chev.) C.F.Liang & A.R.Ferguson
  • Actinidia deliciosa var. chlorocarpa (C.F.Liang) C.F.Liang & A.R.Ferguson
  • Actinidia deliciosa var. coloris T.H.Lin & X.Y.Xiong
  • Actinidia deliciosa var. longipila (Liang & R.Z.Wang) C.F.Liang & A.R.Ferguson
  • Actinidia latifolia var. deliciosa A.Chev.
  • Actinidia multipetaloides H.Z.Jiang
  • Actinidia setosa (Li) C.F.Liang & A.R.Ferguson

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.