Paulownia tomentosa(Thunb.) Steud.

princess tree

WFO wfo-0000470767 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Paulownia tomentosa, photographed by Joseph Aubert
fig. a Joseph Aubert, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-11 / obs. 205692354
Paulownia tomentosa, photographed by Bill Sheehan
fig. b Bill Sheehan, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 204515210
Paulownia tomentosa, photographed by Jason K.
fig. c Jason K., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205504736
Paulownia tomentosa, photographed by Mila C.
fig. d Mila C., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201356653
Paulownia tomentosa, photographed by Yann Kemper
fig. e Yann Kemper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 203935616
Paulownia tomentosa, photographed by Mila C.
fig. f Mila C., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201353733
Paulownia tomentosa, photographed by Caleb Catto
fig. g Caleb Catto, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202471132
Paulownia tomentosa, photographed by Connor Sites-Bowen
fig. h Connor Sites-Bowen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200715030

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.

Flowering n = 1,347 observations

Peak flowering in May, from 1,347 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

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.

  • Bignonia tomentosa Thunb.
  • Paulownia coreana Uyeki
  • Paulownia fortunei var. tsinlingensis Y.Y.Pai
  • Paulownia glabrata Rehder
  • Paulownia grandifolia Wettst.
  • Paulownia imperialis Siebold & Zucc.
  • Paulownia imperialis var. lanata Dode
  • Paulownia imperialis var. pallida Dode
  • Paulownia intermedia T.B.Lee
  • Paulownia lilacina Sprague
  • Paulownia recurva Rehder
  • Paulownia shensiensis Y.Y.Pai
  • Paulownia tomentosa f. pallida (Dode) Rehder
  • Paulownia tomentosa f. virginea H.Ohashi
  • Paulownia tomentosa var. glabrata (Rehder) S.Z.Qu
  • Paulownia tomentosa var. japonica Elwes
  • Paulownia tomentosa var. lanata (Dode) C.K.Schneid.
  • Paulownia tomentosa var. pallida (Dode) C.K.Schneid.

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.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.