Lithraea molleoides

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Lithraea molleoides, photographed by Sebastián Gómez Barboza Silveira — fig. b Sebastián Gómez Barboza Silveira, CC0 1.0 / obs. 185954602

Lithraea molleoides, photographed by demianlescano — fig. c demianlescano, CC0 1.0 / obs. 71691486

Lithraea molleoides, photographed by Hugo Hulsberg — fig. d Hugo Hulsberg, CC0 1.0 / obs. 156347718

Lithraea molleoides, photographed by Maria Belen Suarez — fig. e Maria Belen Suarez, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199634244

Lithraea molleoides, photographed by alejandrapuglia — fig. g alejandrapuglia, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199525722

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 Lithraea molleoides, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Argentina Northeast	AGE	SOUTHERN AMERICA
Argentina Northwest	AGW
Bolivia	BOL
Brazil Northeast	BZE
Brazil South	BZS
Brazil Southeast	BZL
Brazil West-Central	BZC
Paraguay	PAR
Uruguay	URU

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 292 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	2.8 °C	5.1 °C	11.8 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	23.9 °C	27.1 °C	31.5 °C
Annual rainfall	559 mm	1,230 mm	1,667 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	15 mm	45 mm	266 mm

It is found where winters are cool but frost is light or absent. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 292 research-grade observations of Lithraea molleoides 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 14 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.

Lithraea aroeirinha Marchand ex Warm.
Lithraea gilliesii Griseb.
Lithraea lorentziana Hieron. ex Niederl.
Lithraea lorentzii Griseb. ex Rojas Acosta
Lithraea molleoides var. lorentziana Hieron. ex Lillo
Lithraea ternifolia (Gillies ex Hook.) F.A.Barkley
Rhus clausseniana Turcz.
Rhus commersonii Poir.
Rhus meridionalis Spreng.
Schinus leucocarpa Mart. ex Engl.
Schinus molleoides Vell.
Schinus tenuifolius Steud.
Schinus terebinthifolius var. ternifolius (Gillies) Marchand
Schinus ternifolia Gillies ex Hook.

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.