Cestrum nocturnum (night jessamine)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Cestrum nocturnum, photographed by Kevin Faccenda — fig. a Kevin Faccenda, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-02 / obs. 204040905

Cestrum nocturnum, photographed by Manuel Ortiz — fig. b Manuel Ortiz, CC0 1.0 / obs. 200111961

Cestrum nocturnum, photographed by Arthur de Jesús Chavarría Pérez — fig. c Arthur de Jesús Chavarría Pérez, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199878650

Cestrum nocturnum, photographed by Greg Tasney — fig. d Greg Tasney, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 192824890

Cestrum nocturnum, photographed by Jon Sullivan — fig. e Jon Sullivan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199047131

Cestrum nocturnum, photographed by Ashwin Srinivasan — fig. f Ashwin Srinivasan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 174704534

Cestrum nocturnum, photographed by Darren Oh — fig. g Darren Oh, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 160456908

Cestrum nocturnum, photographed by Quinn Shemet — fig. h Quinn Shemet, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 151746569

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 17 botanical countries

Native distribution of Cestrum nocturnum, 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
Belize	BLZ	SOUTHERN AMERICA
Brazil West-Central	BZC
Colombia	CLM
Costa Rica	COS
El Salvador	ELS
French Guiana	FRG
Guatemala	GUA
Honduras	HON
Nicaragua	NIC
Panamá	PAN
Venezuela	VEN
Mexico Central	MXC	NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Gulf	MXG
Mexico Northeast	MXE
Mexico Northwest	MXN
Mexico Southeast	MXT
Mexico Southwest	MXS

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 54 in flower of 121 examined

67%

54%

64%

33%

22%

14%

22%

25%

63%

83%

Proportion of examined Cestrum nocturnum in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	10	15	67%	42% to 85%
Feb	7	13	54%	29% to 77%
Mar	7	11	64%	35% to 85%
Apr	3	9	33%	12% to 65%
May	2	9	22%	6% to 55%
Jun	2	14	14%	4% to 40%
Jul	2	9	22%	6% to 55%
Aug	2	9	22%	6% to 55%
Sep	2	8	25%	7% to 59%
Oct	5	8	63%	31% to 86%
Nov	2	4	too few examined
Dec	10	12	83%	55% to 95%

Peak flowering in Dec. Each bar is the share of Cestrum nocturnum 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. 54 of 121 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. One month has fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for it. 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 15 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 hirtellum Schltdl.
Cestrum leucocarpum Dunal
Cestrum multiflorum Roem. & Schult.
Cestrum nocturnum Lam.
Cestrum nocturnum var. mexicanum O.E.Schulz
Cestrum nocturnum var. nocturnum
Cestrum polyanthum Sendtn.
Cestrum polyanthum Sendtn.
Cestrum propinquum M.Martens & Galeotti
Cestrum scandens Thibaud ex Dunal
Cestrum scandens var. scandens
Cestrum spicatum Mill.
Cestrum suberosum Jacq.
Cestrum viride Moric. ex Dunal
Chiococca nocturna (L.) Jacq.

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.