Lonicera ligustrinaWall.

box honeysuckle

WFO wfo-0001290593 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Lonicera ligustrina, photographed by thulahn
fig. a thulahn, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-03-09 / obs. 182195968

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 6 botanical countries

Regions where Lonicera ligustrina is native: China North-Central, China South-Central, China Southeast, Assam, East Himalaya, Nepal China North-CentralChina South-CentralChina SoutheastAssamEast HimalayaNepal
Native distribution of Lonicera ligustrina, 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.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
China North-Central CHN ASIA-TEMPERATE
China South-Central CHC
China Southeast CHS
Assam ASS ASIA-TROPICAL
East Himalaya EHM
Nepal NEP

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 1,285 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -6.1 °C 1.6 °C 4.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 17.6 °C 20.5 °C 25.0 °C
Annual rainfall 644 mm 884 mm 1,449 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 110 mm 171 mm 268 mm

It is found where winters bring hard 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 1,285 research-grade observations of Lonicera ligustrina 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 15 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.

  • Caprifolium ligustrinum Kuntze
  • Caprifolium pileatum Kuntze
  • Lonicera buxifolia H.Lév.
  • Lonicera ligustrina subsp. ligustrina
  • Lonicera ligustrina subsp. yunnanensis (Franch.) P.S.Hsu & H.J.Wang
  • Lonicera ligustrina var. ligustrina
  • Lonicera missionis H.Lév.
  • Lonicera nitida E.H.Wilson
  • Lonicera pileata Oliv.
  • Lonicera pileata f. yunnanensis (Franch.) Rehder
  • Lonicera pileata var. linearis Rehder
  • Lonicera pileata var. yunnanensis (Franch.) Bernd Schulz
  • Lonicera wightiana Wall.
  • Lonicera wightianum Wall.
  • Xylosteon ligustrinum (Wall.) D.Don

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. USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol LONI5. public domain. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. 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.