Alangium chinense(Lour.) Harms

WFO wfo-0000936752 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Alangium chinense, photographed by Cheng-Te Hsu
fig. a Cheng-Te Hsu, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-01 / obs. 192798254

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.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
689062
Filed as
Alangium chinense Rehder, 1916
Det. by
P. V. The 2004-01-01
Collected
D. E. Atha 2004-07-12
Origin
VN
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 35 botanical countries

Regions where Alangium chinense is native: Angola, Burundi, Cabinda, Cameroon, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Gulf of Guinea Is., Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Sudan-South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, China North-Central, China South-Central, China Southeast, Taiwan, Tibet, Assam, Bangladesh, Cambodia, East Himalaya, India, Jawa, Laos, Lesser Sunda Is., Myanmar, Nepal, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, West Himalaya AngolaBurundiCabindaCameroonDR CongoEthiopiaGulf of Guinea Is.KenyaMalawiMozambiqueRwandaSudan-South SudanTanzaniaUgandaZambiaZimbabweChina North-CentralChina South-CentralChina SoutheastTaiwanTibetAssamBangladeshCambodiaEast HimalayaIndiaJawaLaosLesser Sunda Is.MyanmarNepalPhilippinesThailandVietnamWest Himalaya
Native distribution of Alangium chinense, 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
Angola ANG AFRICA
Burundi BUR
Cabinda CAB
Cameroon CMN
DR Congo ZAI
Ethiopia ETH
Gulf of Guinea Is. GGI
Kenya KEN
Malawi MLW
Mozambique MOZ
Rwanda RWA
Sudan-South Sudan SUD
Tanzania TAN
Uganda UGA
Zambia ZAM
Zimbabwe ZIM
Assam ASS ASIA-TROPICAL
Bangladesh BAN
Cambodia CBD
East Himalaya EHM
India IND
Jawa JAW
Laos LAO
Lesser Sunda Is. LSI
Myanmar MYA
Nepal NEP
Philippines PHI
Thailand THA
Vietnam VIE
West Himalaya WHM
China North-Central CHN ASIA-TEMPERATE
China South-Central CHC
China Southeast CHS
Taiwan TAI
Tibet CHT

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.

Flowering 74 in flower of 156 examined

Proportion of examined Alangium chinense in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 0 1 too few examined
Feb 0 1 too few examined
Mar 0 1 too few examined
Apr 19 59 32% 22% to 45%
May 40 46 87% 74% to 94%
Jun 8 11 73% 43% to 90%
Jul 3 8 38% 14% to 69%
Aug 1 8 13% 2% to 47%
Sep 1 2 too few examined
Oct 2 6 33% 10% to 70%
Nov 0 12 0% 0% to 24%
Dec 0 1 too few examined

Peak flowering in May. Each bar is the share of Alangium chinense observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 74 of 156 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 5 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Where it actually grows measured, from 584 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -1.8 °C 11.1 °C 13.4 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 23.7 °C 29.2 °C 31.4 °C
Annual rainfall 1,204 mm 2,410 mm 3,940 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 54 mm 139 mm 418 mm

It is found where winters bring light 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 584 research-grade observations of Alangium chinense 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. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 26 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.

  • Alangium begoniifolium (Roxb.) Baill.
  • Alangium begoniifolium subsp. eubegoniifolium Wangerin
  • Alangium chinense subsp. chinense
  • Alangium chinense subsp. pauciflorum W.P.Fang
  • Alangium chinense subsp. strigosum W.P.Fang
  • Alangium chinense subsp. triangulare (Wangerin) W.P.Fang
  • Alangium chinense var. pauciflorum W.P.Fang ex Y.C.Ho
  • Alangium chinense var. taiwanianum (Masam.) Koidz.
  • Alangium chinense var. vulgare Merr.
  • Alangium cordifolium Zoll. & Moritzi
  • Alangium kenyense Chiov.
  • Alangium octopetalum Hanes ex Blanco
  • Alangium platanifolium f. triangulare Wangerin
  • Alangium taiwanianum Masam.
  • Guettarda jasminiflora Blanco
  • Karangolum chinense (Lour.) Kuntze
  • Marlea affinis Decne.
  • Marlea begoniifolia Roxb.
  • Marlea chinensis (Lour.) Druce
  • Marlea virgata Zoll.
  • Stelanthes solitarius Stokes
  • Stylidium bauthas Lour. ex B.A.Gomes
  • Stylidium begoniifolium (Roxb.) Voigt
  • Stylidium chinense Lour.

and 2 more.

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. 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.