Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations
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 2 botanical countries
| Region | TDWG code | Continent |
|---|---|---|
| China Southeast | CHS | ASIA-TEMPERATE |
| Hainan | CHH |
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.
Where it actually grows measured, from 63 observations
| Condition | 5th percentile | Median | 95th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coldest month, mean daily low | 3.4 °C | 11.8 °C | 24.3 °C |
| Warmest month, mean daily high | 26.9 °C | 29.3 °C | 31.5 °C |
| Annual rainfall | 833 mm | 2,092 mm | 2,605 mm |
| Rainfall in the driest quarter | 22 mm | 121 mm | 204 mm |
It is found where winters are cool but frost is light or absent. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 63 research-grade observations of Citrus japonica 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 Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.
Also published as 29 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.
- Atalantia hindsii (Champ. ex Benth.) Oliv.
- Citrofortunella madurensis (Lour.) D.Rivera, Obón, S.Ríos, Selma, F.Méndez, Verde & F.Cano
- Citrus aurantium subsp. japonica (Thunb.) Engl.
- Citrus aurantium var. globifera Engl.
- Citrus aurantium var. japonica (Thunb.) Hook.f.
- Citrus aurantium var. olivicormis Risso ex Loisel.
- Citrus hindsii (Champ. ex Benth.) Govaerts
- Citrus inermis Roxb.
- Citrus japonica subf. crassifolia (Swingle) M.Hiroe
- Citrus japonica subf. hindsii (Swingle) M.Hiroe
- Citrus japonica var. fructu-elliptica Siebold & Zucc.
- Citrus japonica var. madurensis (Lour.) Guillaumin
- Citrus japonica var. margarita (Lour.) Guillaumin
- Citrus madurensis Lour.
- Citrus margarita Lour.
- Citrus microcarpa Bunge
- Citrus nobilis var. microcarpa Hassk.
- Fortunella bawangica C.C.Huang
- Fortunella chintou (Swingle) C.C.Huang
- Fortunella crassifolia Swingle
- Fortunella hindsii (Champ. ex Benth.) Swingle
- Fortunella hindsii var. chintou Swingle
- Fortunella japonica (Thunb.) Swingle
- Fortunella japonica var. margarita (Lour.) Makino
and 5 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.
- USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol FOHI. public domain. 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.