Murraya paniculata(L.) Jack

orange jasmineChinese box

WFO wfo-0000453279 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Murraya paniculata, photographed by Greg Tasney
fig. a Greg Tasney, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-06-13 / obs. 205711071

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 34 botanical countries

Regions where Murraya paniculata is native: China South-Central, China Southeast, Hainan, Taiwan, Andaman Is., Assam, Bangladesh, Bismarck Archipelago, Borneo, Cambodia, Christmas I., East Himalaya, India, Jawa, Laos, Lesser Sunda Is., Malaya, Maluku, Myanmar, Nepal, New Guinea, Philippines, Solomon Is., Sri Lanka, Sulawesi, Sumatera, Thailand, Vietnam, West Himalaya, New South Wales, Northern Territory, Queensland, Western Australia, Vanuatu China South-CentralChina SoutheastHainanTaiwanAssamBangladeshBismarck ArchipelagoBorneoCambodiaEast HimalayaIndiaJawaLaosLesser Sunda Is.MalayaMalukuMyanmarNepalNew GuineaPhilippinesSolomon Is.Sri LankaSulawesiSumateraThailandVietnamWest HimalayaNew South WalesNorthern TerritoryQueenslandWestern Australia Andaman Is.Christmas I.Vanuatu
Native distribution of Murraya paniculata, 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. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Andaman Is. AND ASIA-TROPICAL
Assam ASS
Bangladesh BAN
Bismarck Archipelago BIS
Borneo BOR
Cambodia CBD
Christmas I. XMS
East Himalaya EHM
India IND
Jawa JAW
Laos LAO
Lesser Sunda Is. LSI
Malaya MLY
Maluku MOL
Myanmar MYA
Nepal NEP
New Guinea NWG
Philippines PHI
Solomon Is. SOL
Sri Lanka SRL
Sulawesi SUL
Sumatera SUM
Thailand THA
Vietnam VIE
West Himalaya WHM
China South-Central CHC ASIA-TEMPERATE
China Southeast CHS
Hainan CHH
Taiwan TAI
New South Wales NSW AUSTRALASIA
Northern Territory NTA
Queensland QLD
Western Australia WAU
Vanuatu VAN PACIFIC

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 117 in flower of 243 examined

Proportion of examined Murraya paniculata in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 7 21 33% 17% to 55%
Feb 5 10 50% 24% to 76%
Mar 12 33 36% 22% to 53%
Apr 15 30 50% 33% to 67%
May 7 18 39% 20% to 61%
Jun 13 19 68% 46% to 85%
Jul 9 14 64% 39% to 84%
Aug 7 16 44% 23% to 67%
Sep 14 20 70% 48% to 85%
Oct 13 23 57% 37% to 74%
Nov 6 20 30% 15% to 52%
Dec 9 19 47% 27% to 68%

Peak flowering in Sep. Each bar is the share of Murraya paniculata 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. 117 of 243 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 1,990 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 8.9 °C 13.2 °C 22.6 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 26.5 °C 29.9 °C 34.0 °C
Annual rainfall 904 mm 2,005 mm 3,607 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 35 mm 122 mm 577 mm

It is barely found anywhere that freezes. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,990 research-grade observations of Murraya paniculata 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 18 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.

  • Camunium exoticum Kuntze
  • Camunium exoticum var. pubescens Kuntze
  • Chalcas camuneng Burm.f.
  • Chalcas exotica Millsp.
  • Chalcas japanensis Lour.
  • Chalcas paniculata L.
  • Chalcas paniculata var. omphalocarpa Yu.Tanaka
  • Connarus foetens Blanco
  • Connarus santaloides Blanco
  • Limonia malliculensis Forst. ex Steud.
  • Marsana buxifolia Sonn.
  • Murraya amoena Salisb.
  • Murraya brevifolia Thwaites
  • Murraya exotica L.
  • Murraya japonensis (Lour.) Raeusch.
  • Murraya paniculata var. exotica (L.) M.R.Almeida
  • Murraya paniculata var. omphalocarpa (Hayata) Tanaka
  • Murraya scandens Hassk.

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.