Areca catechu (betel palm)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Areca catechu, photographed by Haneesh K M — fig. a Haneesh K M, CC0 1.0 / 2022-02-26 / obs. 181182989

Areca catechu, photographed by C L Dheeraj — fig. c C L Dheeraj, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 141694281

Areca catechu, photographed by Forest Botial-Jarvis — fig. d Forest Botial-Jarvis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 174666302

Areca catechu, photographed by S.MORE — fig. e S.MORE, CC0 1.0 / obs. 171421173

Areca catechu, photographed by Samuel Lee — fig. f Samuel Lee, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 170548805

Areca catechu, photographed by Navaneeth Sini George — fig. g Navaneeth Sini George, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 108558164

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 1 botanical country

Native distribution of Areca catechu, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Philippines	PHI	ASIA-TROPICAL

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.

Also published as 13 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.

Areca catechu f. communis Becc.
Areca catechu var. alba Blume
Areca catechu var. batanensis Becc.
Areca catechu var. longicarpa Becc.
Areca catechu var. nigra Giseke
Areca catechu var. silvatica Becc.
Areca cathechu Burm.f.
Areca faufel Gaertn.
Areca himalayana Griff. ex H.Wendl.
Areca hortensis Lour.
Areca macrocarpa Becc.
Areca nigra Giseke ex H.Wendl.
Sublimia areca Comm. ex Mart.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
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.