Leucas chinensis(Retz.) Sm.

WFO wfo-0000226932 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Leucas chinensis, photographed by 潘立傑 LICHIEH_PAN
fig. a 潘立傑 LICHIEH_PAN, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-04-30 / obs. 192128013
Leucas chinensis, photographed by 葉子
fig. b 葉子, CC0 1.0 / obs. 190583526
Leucas chinensis, photographed by 葉子
fig. c 葉子, CC0 1.0 / obs. 179903480
Leucas chinensis, photographed by Manis Lin
fig. d Manis Lin, CC0 1.0 / obs. 177021427
Leucas chinensis, photographed by 葉子
fig. e 葉子, CC0 1.0 / obs. 178180213
Leucas chinensis, photographed by 葉子
fig. f 葉子, CC0 1.0 / obs. 177674548
Leucas chinensis, photographed by 五色鳥
fig. g 五色鳥, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 166778285
Leucas chinensis, photographed by chiuluan
fig. h chiuluan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 157264286

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 8 botanical countries

Regions where Leucas chinensis is native: China Southeast, Hainan, Japan, Nansei-shoto, Ogasawara-shoto, Taiwan, India, Philippines China SoutheastHainanJapanTaiwanIndiaPhilippines Nansei-shoto
Native distribution of Leucas chinensis, 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
China Southeast CHS ASIA-TEMPERATE
Hainan CHH
Japan JAP
Nansei-shoto NNS
Ogasawara-shoto OGA
Taiwan TAI
India IND ASIA-TROPICAL
Philippines PHI

Not drawn on the map: Ogasawara-shoto. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is listed rather than guessed at.

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 153 in flower of 164 examined

Peak flowering in Feb. Each bar is the share of Leucas chinensis 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. 153 of 164 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 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.

  • Ballota pilosa Lour.
  • Blandina chinensis (Retz.) Raf.
  • Leucas benthamiana Hook. & Arn.
  • Leucas chinensis var. lanata Hook.f.
  • Leucas lamiifolia Zipp. ex Span.
  • Leucas mollissima subsp. chinensis (Benth.) Murata
  • Leucas mollissima var. chinensis Benth.
  • Leucas mollissima var. riukiuensis (Ohwi) Masam.
  • Leucas riukiuensis Ohwi
  • Leucas takaoensis Hayata
  • Phlomis chinensis Retz.
  • Phlomis montana J.Koenig ex Roxb.
  • Phlomis sinensis J.F.Gmel.

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. 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.