Luma apiculata (shortleaf stopper)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Luma apiculata, photographed by Cesar Ormazabal — fig. a Cesar Ormazabal, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-04-30 / obs. 196106401

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 3 botanical countries

Native distribution of Luma apiculata, 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 South	AGS	SOUTHERN AMERICA
Chile Central	CLC
Chile South	CLS

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 132 in flower of 322 examined

70%

82%

70%

50%

17%

13%

12%

33%

24%

Proportion of examined Luma apiculata in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	30	43	70%	55% to 81%
Feb	45	55	82%	70% to 90%
Mar	21	30	70%	52% to 83%
Apr	16	32	50%	34% to 66%
May	4	23	17%	7% to 37%
Jun	3	24	13%	4% to 31%
Jul	3	26	12%	4% to 29%
Aug	5	15	33%	15% to 58%
Sep	0	13	0%	0% to 23%
Oct	0	23	0%	0% to 14%
Nov	1	21	5%	1% to 23%
Dec	4	17	24%	10% to 47%

Peak flowering in Feb. Each bar is the share of Luma apiculata 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. 132 of 322 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 29 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.

Eugenia affinis Gillies ex Hook. & Arn.
Eugenia apiculata DC.
Eugenia apiculata var. arnyan Hook.f.
Eugenia barneoudii O.Berg
Eugenia cuspidata Phil.
Eugenia ebracteata Phil.
Eugenia gilliesii Hook. & Arn.
Eugenia hookeri Steud.
Eugenia luma O.Berg
Eugenia modesta Phil.
Eugenia moraviana var. moraviana
Eugenia mucronata Phil.
Eugenia palenae Phil.
Eugenia palustris Barb.Rodr.
Eugenia proba O.Berg
Eugenia spectabilis Phil.
Luma gilliesii (Hook. & Arn.) Burret
Luma hookeri (Steud.) Burret
Luma spectabilis (Phil.) Burret
Myrceugenella apiculata (DC.) Kausel
Myrceugenella apiculata var. australis Kausel
Myrceugenella apiculata var. genuina Kausel
Myrceugenella apiculata var. nahulhuapensis Kausel
Myrceugenella apiculata var. spectabilis (Phil.) Kausel

and 5 more.

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