Cestrum axillare

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Cestrum axillare, photographed by Tony Rebelo — fig. c Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 188335906

Cestrum axillare, photographed by Margaret Burger — fig. f Margaret Burger, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 153745711

Cestrum axillare, photographed by Mahomed Desai — fig. h Mahomed Desai, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 136526171

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 7 botanical countries

Native distribution of Cestrum axillare, 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
Argentina Northeast	AGE	SOUTHERN AMERICA
Brazil North	BZN
Brazil Northeast	BZE
Brazil South	BZS
Brazil Southeast	BZL
Brazil West-Central	BZC
Paraguay	PAR

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 76 in flower of 118 examined

67%

100%

92%

86%

75%

46%

50%

56%

Proportion of examined Cestrum axillare in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	6	9	67%	35% to 88%
Feb	5	5	100%	57% to 100%
Mar	11	12	92%	65% to 99%
Apr	24	28	86%	69% to 94%
May	6	8	75%	41% to 93%
Jun	12	26	46%	29% to 65%
Jul	4	8	50%	22% to 78%
Aug	0	4	too few examined
Sep	0	2	too few examined
Oct	1	3	too few examined
Nov	2	4	too few examined
Dec	5	9	56%	27% to 81%

Peak flowering in Feb. Each bar is the share of Cestrum axillare 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. 76 of 118 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 4 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.

Also published as 12 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.

Cestrum arvense Vell.
Cestrum bella-sombra Dunal
Cestrum eriochiton Sendtn.
Cestrum laevigatum Schltdl.
Cestrum laevigatum var. collinum Dunal
Cestrum laevigatum var. evolutum Schltdl.
Cestrum laevigatum var. laevigatum
Cestrum laevigatum var. paraguayense Francey
Cestrum laevigatum var. pauperculum Schltdl.
Cestrum laevigatum var. puberulum Sendtn.
Cestrum memorabile Witasek
Cestrum multiflorum Schott ex Sendtn.

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.
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.