Plate 1 figs. a–h · 5 observations
This species has been photographed under an open licence only 5 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.
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
| Region | TDWG code | Continent |
|---|---|---|
| China North-Central | CHN | ASIA-TEMPERATE |
| China South-Central | CHC | |
| Inner Mongolia | CHI | |
| Manchuria | CHM | |
| Qinghai | CHQ |
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 258 observations
| Condition | 5th percentile | Median | 95th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coldest month, mean daily low | -18.6 °C | -12.9 °C | -1.1 °C |
| Warmest month, mean daily high | 21.6 °C | 23.6 °C | 29.9 °C |
| Annual rainfall | 384 mm | 669 mm | 1,267 mm |
| Rainfall in the driest quarter | 11 mm | 93 mm | 265 mm |
It is found where winters are severely cold. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 258 research-grade observations of Malus prunifolia 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 Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.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 38 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.
- Malus domestica subsp. prunifolia (Willd.) Likhonos
- Malus grandiflora (Asami) Koidz.
- Malus prunifolia f. alba Asami
- Malus prunifolia f. coccinea Dippel
- Malus prunifolia f. conocarpa Dippel
- Malus prunifolia f. dulcis Dippel
- Malus prunifolia f. edulis Dippel
- Malus prunifolia f. fastigiata Rehder
- Malus prunifolia f. fastigiata-bifera (Dieck ex C.K.Schneid.) Al.Fed.
- Malus prunifolia f. fructo-striato Zabel
- Malus prunifolia f. lutea (Bean) Al.Fed.
- Malus prunifolia f. pendula (Neubert) Rehder
- Malus prunifolia f. semiplena Asami
- Malus prunifolia var. grandiflora Asami
- Malus prunifolia var. longifolia Asami
- Malus prunifolia var. lutea Bean
- Malus prunifolia var. obliquipedicellata X.W.Li & J.W.Sun
- Malus prunifolia var. ovicarpa Asami
- Malus prunifolia var. pendula (Neubert) Bean
- Malus prunifolia var. prunifolia
- Malus prunifolia var. pulverulenta Lavallée
- Malus ringo unranked fastigiata-bifera Dieck ex C.K.Schneid.
- Pyrus ceratocarpa Wender.
- Pyrus polonica K.Koch
and 14 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 MAPR. 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.