Cinnamomum camphora (Camphor laurel)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Cinnamomum camphora, photographed by Greg Tasney — fig. a Greg Tasney, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-06-13 / obs. 205712400

Cinnamomum camphora, photographed by WATANABE Hitoshi 渡辺仁 — fig. b WATANABE Hitoshi 渡辺仁, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205385637

Cinnamomum camphora, photographed by Tony Rebelo — fig. c Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 205873072

Cinnamomum camphora, photographed by Dave Richardson — fig. g Dave Richardson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 188280190

Cinnamomum camphora, photographed by Nonbinary-Naturalist — fig. h Nonbinary-Naturalist, CC0 1.0 / obs. 188189164

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.

Flowering 52 in flower of 319 examined

11%

52%

26%

27%

25%

Proportion of examined Cinnamomum camphora in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	1	25	4%	1% to 20%
Feb	3	27	11%	4% to 28%
Mar	16	31	52%	35% to 68%
Apr	13	50	26%	16% to 40%
May	2	24	8%	2% to 26%
Jun	1	14	7%	1% to 31%
Jul	0	25	0%	0% to 13%
Aug	2	24	8%	2% to 26%
Sep	7	26	27%	14% to 46%
Oct	6	24	25%	12% to 45%
Nov	1	25	4%	1% to 20%
Dec	0	24	0%	0% to 14%

Peak flowering in Mar. Each bar is the share of Cinnamomum camphora 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. 52 of 319 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 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 51 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.

Camphora camelliifolia Lukman.
Camphora camphora (L.) H.Karst.
Camphora decaisnei Lukman.
Camphora decandollei Lukman.
Camphora hahnemannii Lukman.
Camphora hippocratei Lukman.
Camphora humboldtii Lukman.
Camphora microphylla Lukman.
Camphora neesii Lukman.
Camphora neesii var. microphylla Lukman.
Camphora neesii var. pharbitifolia Lukman.
Camphora officinarum Nees
Camphora officinarum var. glaucescens A.Braun
Camphora oldhamii Lukman.
Camphora pharbitifolia Lukman.
Camphora procera Lukman.
Camphora rougieri var. glandulifera Lukman.
Camphora rougierii Lukman.
Camphora sieboldii Lukman.
Camphora syringifolia Lukman.
Camphora thouarsii Lukman.
Camphora thunbergii Lukman.
Camphora thwaitesii Lukman.
Camphora vera Raf.

and 27 more.

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.

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. It has no native range either: Kew's checklist does not cover this taxon.