Chionanthus virginicusL.

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WFO wfo-0000830265 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Chionanthus virginicus, photographed by Jeff Clark
fig. a Jeff Clark, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-12 / obs. 205618931
Chionanthus virginicus, photographed by Joseph Aubert
fig. b Joseph Aubert, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205970816
Chionanthus virginicus, photographed by Carol Ann McCormick
fig. c Carol Ann McCormick, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203595515
Chionanthus virginicus, photographed by Natalie Waddell-Rutter
fig. d Natalie Waddell-Rutter, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203389923
Chionanthus virginicus, photographed by John Baur
fig. e John Baur, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201696043
Chionanthus virginicus, photographed by Yann Kemper
fig. f Yann Kemper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 198013578
Chionanthus virginicus, photographed by Yann Kemper
fig. g Yann Kemper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 198013507
Chionanthus virginicus, photographed by Kathy Richardson
fig. h Kathy Richardson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 197936679

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 23 botanical countries

Regions where Chionanthus virginicus is native: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia AlabamaArkansasFloridaGeorgiaKentuckyLouisianaMarylandMassachusettsMississippiMissouriNew JerseyNew YorkNorth CarolinaOhioOklahomaPennsylvaniaSouth CarolinaTennesseeTexasVirginiaWest Virginia DelawareDistrict of Columbia
Native distribution of Chionanthus virginicus, 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. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Alabama ALA NORTHERN AMERICA
Arkansas ARK
Delaware DEL
District of Columbia WDC
Florida FLA
Georgia GEO
Kentucky KTY
Louisiana LOU
Maryland MRY
Massachusetts MAS
Mississippi MSI
Missouri MSO
New Jersey NWJ
New York NWY
North Carolina NCA
Ohio OHI
Oklahoma OKL
Pennsylvania PEN
South Carolina SCA
Tennessee TEN
Texas TEX
Virginia VRG
West Virginia WVA

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 905 in flower of 1,047 examined

Peak flowering in Mar. Each bar is the share of Chionanthus virginicus 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. 905 of 1,047 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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 2,043 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -4.8 °C 0.3 °C 8.3 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 27.3 °C 31.0 °C 33.4 °C
Annual rainfall 1,049 mm 1,241 mm 1,592 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 199 mm 261 mm 331 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 2,043 research-grade observations of Chionanthus virginicus 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 23 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.

  • Chionanthus angustifolius Raf.
  • Chionanthus cotinifolius Willd.
  • Chionanthus fragrans Edwards ex Steud.
  • Chionanthus heterophylus Raf.
  • Chionanthus latifolius Aiton ex Steud.
  • Chionanthus longifolius Raf.
  • Chionanthus luteus Lavallée
  • Chionanthus maritimus (Pursh) Prince
  • Chionanthus montanus (Pursh) Prince
  • Chionanthus obovatus Raf.
  • Chionanthus roseus Barton
  • Chionanthus trifidus Moench
  • Chionanthus triflorus Stokes
  • Chionanthus vernalis Salisb.
  • Chionanthus vernus Baill.
  • Chionanthus virginicus subsp. maritimus (Pursh) A.E.Murray
  • Chionanthus virginicus var. angustifolius Aiton
  • Chionanthus virginicus var. latifolius Aiton
  • Chionanthus virginicus var. maritimus Pursh
  • Chionanthus virginicus var. montanus Pursh
  • Chionanthus zeylanicus Lam.
  • Ligustrum cotinifolium (Willd.) Jacques
  • Linociera cotinifolia (Willd.) Vahl

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. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. 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.