Bursera simaruba(L.) Sarg.

Gumbo Limbo

WFO wfo-0000576316 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Bursera simaruba, photographed by Donald Davesne
fig. a Donald Davesne, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-14 / obs. 205831388
Bursera simaruba, photographed by Josiah Londerée
fig. b Josiah Londerée, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 198449481
Bursera simaruba, photographed by Alan Weakley
fig. c Alan Weakley, CC0 1.0 / obs. 195509604
Bursera simaruba, photographed by Maria Janeiro
fig. d Maria Janeiro, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 192901809
Bursera simaruba, photographed by Jay Pruett
fig. e Jay Pruett, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 186984014
Bursera simaruba, photographed by stinger
fig. f stinger, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 186796026
Bursera simaruba, photographed by Maria Janeiro
fig. g Maria Janeiro, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 194719622
Bursera simaruba, photographed by stinger
fig. h stinger, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 186795971

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.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 43 observations

Peak flowering in Apr, from 43 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 16 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.

  • Bursera arborea (Rose) L.Riley
  • Bursera bonairensis Bold.
  • Bursera gummifera L.
  • Bursera gummifera var. glabrata Griseb.
  • Bursera gummifera var. polyphylla DC.
  • Bursera integerrima (Tul.) Triana & Planch.
  • Bursera simaruba var. yucatanensis Lundell
  • Bursera subpubescens (Rose) Engl.
  • Elaphrium arboreum (Rose) Rose
  • Elaphrium integerrimum Tul.
  • Elaphrium simaruba (L.) Rose
  • Elaphrium subpubescens Rose
  • Icicariba simaruba M.Gómez
  • Pistacia simaruba L.
  • Terebinthus arborea Rose
  • Terebinthus simaruba (L.) W.Wight ex Rose

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.

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