Elaeocarpus japonicus

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Elaeocarpus japonicus, photographed by lansan — fig. b lansan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 136932849

Elaeocarpus japonicus, photographed by Jacy Chen — fig. c Jacy Chen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 110881127

Elaeocarpus japonicus, photographed by Cheng-Tao Lin — fig. d Cheng-Tao Lin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 21769776

Elaeocarpus japonicus, photographed by 呂一起(Lyu yi-chi) — fig. e 呂一起(Lyu yi-chi), CC BY 4.0 / obs. 32468375

Elaeocarpus japonicus, photographed by teresa lo — fig. g teresa lo, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201494624

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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 769 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	4.2 °C	11.6 °C	13.8 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	22.4 °C	28.8 °C	30.6 °C
Annual rainfall	2,218 mm	3,556 mm	4,807 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	144 mm	576 mm	841 mm

It is barely found anywhere that freezes. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 769 research-grade observations of Elaeocarpus japonicus 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 Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.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 6 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.

Elaeocarpus dioicus Turcz.
Elaeocarpus japonicus var. euphlebius Merr.
Elaeocarpus kobanmochi Koidz.
Elaeocarpus lantsangensis Hu
Elaeocarpus yentangensis Hu
Elaeocarpus yunnanensis Brandis ex Tutcher

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.

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.