Lindera communis

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Lindera communis, photographed by Cheng-Tao Lin — fig. c Cheng-Tao Lin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 59102608

Lindera communis, photographed by 國立臺灣博物館 — fig. d 國立臺灣博物館, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 59331210

Lindera communis, photographed by 呂一起(Lyu yi-chi) — fig. f 呂一起(Lyu yi-chi), CC BY 4.0 / obs. 32422106

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 9 botanical countries

Native distribution of Lindera communis, 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
China North-Central	CHN	ASIA-TEMPERATE
China South-Central	CHC
China Southeast	CHS
Nansei-shoto	NNS
Taiwan	TAI
Laos	LAO	ASIA-TROPICAL
Myanmar	MYA
Thailand	THA
Vietnam	VIE

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 449 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	6.8 °C	10.7 °C	12.8 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	24.3 °C	28.1 °C	30.2 °C
Annual rainfall	2,298 mm	3,328 mm	4,839 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	128 mm	268 mm	834 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 449 research-grade observations of Lindera communis 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 Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.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.

Beilschmiedia parvifolia Lecomte
Benzoin commune (Hemsl.) Rehder
Benzoin formosanum (Hayata) Kamik.
Lindera bodinieri H.Lév.
Lindera communis var. esquirolii (H.Lév.) S.Y.Hu
Lindera communis var. okinawensis Hatus.
Lindera formosana Hayata
Lindera glauca var. nitidula Lecomte
Lindera paxiana H.J.P.Winkl.
Lindera sterrophylla C.K.Allen
Lindera yunnanensis H.Lév.
Litsea cavaleriei H.Lév.
Litsea esquirolii H.Lév.

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.