Nyssa bifloraWalter

swamp tupelo

WFO wfo-0000252573 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Nyssa biflora, photographed by mfeaver
fig. a mfeaver, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-10-01 / obs. 161111608
Nyssa biflora, photographed by Ryan Watson
fig. b Ryan Watson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 160178446
Nyssa biflora, photographed by Tom Field
fig. c Tom Field, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 160944169
Nyssa biflora, photographed by Tom Field
fig. d Tom Field, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 129396851
Nyssa biflora, photographed by Siddarth Machado
fig. e Siddarth Machado, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 127193027
Nyssa biflora, photographed by Jessica
fig. f Jessica, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 79873108
Nyssa biflora, photographed by Jessica
fig. g Jessica, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 77632555
Nyssa biflora, photographed by Austin Pursley
fig. h Austin Pursley, CC0 1.0 / obs. 70392542

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 17 botanical countries

Regions where Nyssa biflora is native: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia AlabamaArkansasFloridaGeorgiaIllinoisKentuckyLouisianaMarylandMississippiMissouriNew JerseyNorth CarolinaSouth CarolinaTennesseeTexasVirginia Delaware
Native distribution of Nyssa biflora, 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
Alabama ALA NORTHERN AMERICA
Arkansas ARK
Delaware DEL
Florida FLA
Georgia GEO
Illinois ILL
Kentucky KTY
Louisiana LOU
Maryland MRY
Mississippi MSI
Missouri MSO
New Jersey NWJ
North Carolina NCA
South Carolina SCA
Tennessee TEN
Texas TEX
Virginia VRG

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 601 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 0.8 °C 6.8 °C 12.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 29.1 °C 31.7 °C 33.0 °C
Annual rainfall 1,179 mm 1,385 mm 1,837 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 170 mm 263 mm 362 mm

It is found where winters are cool but frost is light or absent. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 601 research-grade observations of Nyssa biflora 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 6 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.

  • Nyssa biflora var. ursina (Small) D.B.Ward
  • Nyssa servatilis E.H.L.Krause
  • Nyssa sylvatica subsp. biflora (Walter) A.E.Murray
  • Nyssa sylvatica var. biflora (Walter) Sarg.
  • Nyssa sylvatica var. ursina (Small) J.Wen & Stuessy
  • Nyssa ursina Small

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.