Eugenia ligustrina(Sw.) Willd.

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WFO wfo-0000957856 Accepted WFO 2026-06 4 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–d · 2 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 2 times, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Eugenia ligustrina, photographed by Eric Knight
fig. a Eric Knight, CC BY 4.0 / 2014-05-28 / obs. 977816

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 14 botanical countries

Regions where Eugenia ligustrina is native: Bolivia, Brazil North, Brazil Northeast, Brazil South, Brazil Southeast, Dominican Republic, Guyana, Haiti, Leeward Is., Puerto Rico, Suriname, Trinidad-Tobago, Venezuela, Windward Is. BoliviaBrazil NorthBrazil NortheastBrazil SouthBrazil SoutheastDominican RepublicGuyanaHaitiPuerto RicoSurinameTrinidad-TobagoVenezuela Leeward Is.Windward Is.
Native distribution of Eugenia ligustrina, 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
Bolivia BOL SOUTHERN AMERICA
Brazil North BZN
Brazil Northeast BZE
Brazil South BZS
Brazil Southeast BZL
Dominican Republic DOM
Guyana GUY
Haiti HAI
Leeward Is. LEE
Puerto Rico PUE
Suriname SUR
Trinidad-Tobago TRT
Venezuela VEN
Windward Is. WIN

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 118 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 18.3 °C 22.9 °C 24.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 27.5 °C 29.0 °C 30.9 °C
Annual rainfall 1,068 mm 1,458 mm 2,334 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 61 mm 186 mm 330 mm

It is not found anywhere that gets close to freezing. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 118 research-grade observations of Eugenia ligustrina 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 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.

  • Eugenia cerasina (Vahl) Mattos
  • Eugenia ligustrina var. minensis (O.Berg) Mattos
  • Eugenia minensis (O.Berg) Mattos
  • Eugenia ophthalmantha Kiaersk.
  • Myrtus bracteiflora Sessé & Moc.
  • Myrtus cerasina Vahl
  • Myrtus ligustrina Sw.
  • Stenocalyx gemmiflorus O.Berg
  • Stenocalyx ligustrina (Sw.) O.Berg
  • Stenocalyx ligustrina var. caribaea O.Berg
  • Stenocalyx ligustrinus var. fluminensis O.Berg
  • Stenocalyx ligustrinus var. minensis O.Berg
  • Stenocalyx squamiflorus O.Berg

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.