Lithocarpus glaberNakai

WFO wfo-0000229939 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 6 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 6 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.

Lithocarpus glaber, photographed by Jacy Chen
fig. a Jacy Chen, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-03-30 / obs. 134024232
Lithocarpus glaber, photographed by Jacy Chen
fig. b Jacy Chen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 134026366
Lithocarpus glaber, photographed by chiuluan
fig. c chiuluan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 88820843
Lithocarpus glaber, photographed by Tatsutomo Chin
fig. d Tatsutomo Chin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 43380148
Lithocarpus glaber, photographed by Cheng-Te Hsu
fig. e Cheng-Te Hsu, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 139905376
Lithocarpus glaber, photographed by Jacy Chen
fig. f Jacy Chen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 134026401
Lithocarpus glaber, photographed by Yj
fig. g Yj, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 168578569
Lithocarpus glaber, photographed by Cheng-Te Hsu
fig. h Cheng-Te Hsu, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 139905365

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 5 botanical countries

Regions where Lithocarpus glaber is native: China South-Central, China Southeast, Japan, Nansei-shoto, Taiwan China South-CentralChina SoutheastJapanTaiwan Nansei-shoto
Native distribution of Lithocarpus glaber, 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 South-Central CHC ASIA-TEMPERATE
China Southeast CHS
Japan JAP
Nansei-shoto NNS
Taiwan TAI

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 276 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -0.1 °C 10.8 °C 13.2 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 26.7 °C 28.5 °C 32.6 °C
Annual rainfall 1,531 mm 2,831 mm 3,797 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 88 mm 178 mm 611 mm

It is found where winters bring light frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 276 research-grade observations of Lithocarpus glaber 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 17 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.

  • Kuromatea glabra (Thunb.) Kudô
  • Lithocarpus inversus Nakai
  • Lithocarpus thalassicus Rehder
  • Pasania glabra (Thunb.) Oerst.
  • Pasania sieboldiana (Blume) Nakai
  • Pasania thalassica Oerst.
  • Quercus acuta Siebold ex Blume
  • Quercus glabra Bürger ex Blume
  • Quercus glabra Thunb.
  • Quercus glauca Bürger ex Blume
  • Quercus inversa Lindl. & Paxton
  • Quercus reversa Benth.
  • Quercus sieboldiana Blume
  • Quercus thalassica Hance
  • Quercus thalassica var. obtusiglans Dunn
  • Synaedrys glabra (Thunb.) Koidz.
  • Synaedrys thalassica Koidz.

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.