Perilla frutescens(L.) Britton

beefsteak plant

WFO wfo-0000267281 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Perilla frutescens, photographed by Zakqary Roy
fig. a Zakqary Roy, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-20 / obs. 199165139
Perilla frutescens, photographed by Ryan Sorrells
fig. b Ryan Sorrells, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 191168041
Perilla frutescens, photographed by stephen
fig. c stephen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 196661581
Perilla frutescens, photographed by Yann Kemper
fig. d Yann Kemper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 184961139
Perilla frutescens, photographed by Thomas Koffel
fig. e Thomas Koffel, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 186126208
Perilla frutescens, photographed by Bonnie Semmling
fig. f Bonnie Semmling, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 182774111
Perilla frutescens, photographed by Kim
fig. g Kim, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 172926430
Perilla frutescens, photographed by Daniel Patterson
fig. h Daniel Patterson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 179944909

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 = 553 observations

Peak flowering in Sep, from 553 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 46 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.

  • Acinos jegoma Siebold
  • Acinos siso Siebold
  • Dentidia nankinensis Lour.
  • Dentidia purpurascens Pers.
  • Dentidia purpurea Poir.
  • Lumnitzera salvioides (B.Heyne ex Roth) Spreng.
  • Melissa maxima Ard.
  • Mentha perilloides Lam.
  • Ocimum acutum Thunb.
  • Ocimum crispum Thunb.
  • Ocimum frutescens L.
  • Ocimum salvioides B.Heyne ex Roth
  • Perilla acuta (Thunb.) Nakai
  • Perilla albiflora Odash.
  • Perilla arguta Benth.
  • Perilla avium Dunn
  • Perilla citriodora (Makino) Nakai
  • Perilla crispa (Thunb.) Tanaka
  • Perilla frutescens f. crispa (Thunb.) Makino
  • Perilla frutescens f. crispidiscolor Makino
  • Perilla frutescens f. rosea (G.Nicholson) Kudô
  • Perilla frutescens f. viridis (Makino) Makino
  • Perilla frutescens var. acuta (Thunb.) Kudô
  • Perilla frutescens var. arguta (Benth.) Hand.-Mazz.

and 22 more.

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.