Frangula californica(Eschsch.) A.Gray

coffeeberry

WFO wfo-0000691873 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Frangula californica, photographed by Jeremiah Degenhardt
fig. a Jeremiah Degenhardt, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-19 / obs. 199379090
Frangula californica, photographed by Michael Warner
fig. b Michael Warner, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195501438
Frangula californica, photographed by Michael Warner
fig. c Michael Warner, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204720537
Frangula californica, photographed by Heather Dawnstar Sabin
fig. d Heather Dawnstar Sabin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200071777
Frangula californica, photographed by Jeremiah Degenhardt
fig. e Jeremiah Degenhardt, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199379434
Frangula californica, photographed by Ken-ichi Ueda
fig. f Ken-ichi Ueda, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 187640993
Frangula californica, photographed by joergmlpts
fig. g joergmlpts, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 198252725
Frangula californica, photographed by Dan Horowitz
fig. h Dan Horowitz, CC0 1.0 / obs. 188874039

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 n = 896 observations

Peak flowering in Jun, from 896 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 30 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.

  • Endotropis oleifera Raf.
  • Frangula californica var. tomentella (Benth.) A.Gray
  • Frangula occidentalis (Howell) Grubov
  • Frangula tomentella (Benth.) Grubov
  • Frangula ursina (Greene) Grubov
  • Perfonon laurifolium Raf.
  • Rhamnus californica Eschsch.
  • Rhamnus californica subsp. crassifolia (Jeps.) C.B.Wolf
  • Rhamnus californica subsp. occidentalis (Howell) C.B.Wolf
  • Rhamnus californica subsp. tomentella (Benth.) C.B.Wolf
  • Rhamnus californica subsp. ursina (Greene) C.B.Wolf
  • Rhamnus californica var. betulifolia Trel.
  • Rhamnus californica var. crassifolia Jeps.
  • Rhamnus californica var. occidentalis (Howell) Jeps.
  • Rhamnus californica var. tomentella W.H.Brewer & S.Watson
  • Rhamnus californica var. ursina (Greene) McMinn
  • Rhamnus castorea Greene
  • Rhamnus cuspidata Greene
  • Rhamnus laurifolia Nutt.
  • Rhamnus major Carrière
  • Rhamnus nana Carrière
  • Rhamnus occidentalis Howell ex Greene
  • Rhamnus oleifolia Hook.
  • Rhamnus purshiana var. californica Rehder

and 6 more.

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.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.