Maytenus boariaMolina

mayten

WFO wfo-0000375129 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Maytenus boaria, photographed by Jon Sullivan
fig. a Jon Sullivan, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-04-30 / obs. 195543149
Maytenus boaria, photographed by Jon Sullivan
fig. b Jon Sullivan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195871473
Maytenus boaria, photographed by Jon Sullivan
fig. c Jon Sullivan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195871629
Maytenus boaria, photographed by Cesar Ormazabal
fig. d Cesar Ormazabal, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 187610921
Maytenus boaria, photographed by Cesar Ormazabal
fig. e Cesar Ormazabal, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 187610936
Maytenus boaria, photographed by Nicolás Lavandero
fig. f Nicolás Lavandero, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 179213225
Maytenus boaria, photographed by Darío De la Fuente
fig. g Darío De la Fuente, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 170584637
Maytenus boaria, photographed by Alice Shanks
fig. h Alice Shanks, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 168891093

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

Regions where Maytenus boaria is native: Argentina Northeast, Argentina Northwest, Argentina South, Bolivia, Brazil South, Brazil Southeast, Chile Central, Chile North, Chile South Argentina NortheastArgentina NorthwestArgentina SouthBoliviaBrazil SouthBrazil SoutheastChile CentralChile NorthChile South
Native distribution of Maytenus boaria, 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
Argentina Northeast AGE SOUTHERN AMERICA
Argentina Northwest AGW
Argentina South AGS
Bolivia BOL
Brazil South BZS
Brazil Southeast BZL
Chile Central CLC
Chile North CLN
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 169 in flower of 780 examined

Peak flowering in Oct. Each bar is the share of Maytenus boaria 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. 169 of 780 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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 1,722 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -1.1 °C 3.5 °C 8.7 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 18.3 °C 22.2 °C 29.2 °C
Annual rainfall 408 mm 711 mm 2,241 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 3 mm 113 mm 241 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 1,722 research-grade observations of Maytenus boaria 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. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 16 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.

  • Boaria molinae A.DC.
  • Celastrus boaria (Molina) Baill.
  • Celastrus maytenus Lam. ex Forsyth f.
  • Celastrus maytenus Willd.
  • Celastrus uncinatus Ruiz & Pav.
  • Maytenus angustifolia Mattos & N.F.Mattos
  • Maytenus boaria var. angustifolia Turcz.
  • Maytenus boaria var. angustifolia Reissek ex Loes.
  • Maytenus boaria var. latifolia Reissek ex Loes.
  • Maytenus chilensis DC.
  • Maytenus chilensis var. angustifolius DC.
  • Maytenus crenulata C.Presl
  • Maytenus marginata Ettingsh.
  • Maytenus pendulina Steud.
  • Maytenus uncinata (Ruiz & Pav.) G.Don
  • Senacia maytenus Lam.

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. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. 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.