Croton linearis

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Croton linearis, photographed by Brian Oakes Haiti Hunter — fig. b Brian Oakes Haiti Hunter, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 180941173

Croton linearis, photographed by wverhoeven — fig. c wverhoeven, CC0 1.0 / obs. 174984793

Croton linearis, photographed by marique — fig. f marique, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 170040045

Croton linearis, photographed by jrcagle — fig. g jrcagle, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 134441622

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 Croton linearis, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Bahamas	BAH	SOUTHERN AMERICA
Cuba	CUB
Dominican Republic	DOM
Haiti	HAI
Jamaica	JAM
Turks-Caicos Is.	TCI
Florida	FLA	NORTHERN AMERICA

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 34 in flower of 41 examined

67%

89%

80%

100%

Proportion of examined Croton linearis in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	4	6	67%	30% to 90%
Feb	8	9	89%	56% to 98%
Mar	4	5	80%	38% to 96%
Apr	3	4	too few examined
May	1	1	too few examined
Jun	5	5	100%	57% to 100%
Jul	0	0	too few examined
Aug	3	3	too few examined
Sep	0	1	too few examined
Oct	0	0	too few examined
Nov	0	1	too few examined
Dec	6	6	100%	61% to 100%

Peak flowering in Jun. Each bar is the share of Croton linearis 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. 34 of 41 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 7 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 13 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.

Cascarilla linearis (Jacq.) Raf.
Croton angustatus Urb.
Croton cascarilla var. linearis (Jacq.) Griseb.
Croton fergusonii Small
Croton hippophaeoides A.Rich.
Croton jaegerianus Müll.Arg.
Croton kenskoffii Urb.
Croton linearis var. dilatatus Urb.
Croton linearis var. fergusonii (Small) D.B.Ward
Croton linearis var. sagranus (Müll.Arg.) M.Gómez
Croton nipensis Urb.
Croton picardae Urb.
Oxydectes linearis (Jacq.) Kuntze

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.