Philadelphus inodorus (scentless mock orange)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Philadelphus inodorus, photographed by Douglas Goldman — fig. a Douglas Goldman, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-05-03 / obs. 198705504

Philadelphus inodorus, photographed by Melissa McMasters — fig. b Melissa McMasters, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 191951274

Philadelphus inodorus, photographed by Brian Finzel — fig. c Brian Finzel, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 120363788

Philadelphus inodorus, photographed by Alan Weakley — fig. d Alan Weakley, CC0 1.0 / obs. 6836834

Philadelphus inodorus, photographed by Leila Dasher — fig. e Leila Dasher, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 6303487

Philadelphus inodorus, photographed by Evan M. Raskin — fig. f Evan M. Raskin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 7717517

Philadelphus inodorus, photographed by mefisher — fig. g mefisher, CC0 1.0 / obs. 201960068

Philadelphus inodorus, photographed by Ashwin Srinivasan — fig. h Ashwin Srinivasan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 158423129

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.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium: The New York Botanical Garden
Accession: 02236105
Filed as: Philadelphus inodorus L.
Det. by: D. E. Atha 2013-01-01
Collected: D. E. Atha 2013-09-29
Origin: US
The sheet: View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 10 botanical countries

Native distribution of Philadelphus inodorus, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Alabama	ALA	NORTHERN AMERICA
Florida	FLA
Georgia	GEO
Kentucky	KTY
Mississippi	MSI
North Carolina	NCA
South Carolina	SCA
Tennessee	TEN
Virginia	VRG
West Virginia	WVA

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 136 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	-5.8 °C	0.6 °C	5.4 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	26.2 °C	31.1 °C	32.7 °C
Annual rainfall	1,048 mm	1,283 mm	1,569 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	209 mm	269 mm	332 mm

It is found where winters bring hard 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 136 research-grade observations of Philadelphus inodorus 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 24 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.

Philadelphus coronarius var. floribundus (Schrad. ex DC.) Maxim.
Philadelphus floribundus Schrad. ex DC.
Philadelphus floridus Beadle
Philadelphus floridus var. faxonii Rehder
Philadelphus floridus var. rehderianus S.Y.Hu
Philadelphus gloriosus Beadle
Philadelphus grandiflorus Willd.
Philadelphus grandiflorus var. floribundus (Schrad. ex DC.) Torr. & A.Gray
Philadelphus grandiflorus var. laxus Torr. & A.Gray
Philadelphus humilis DC.
Philadelphus igneus G.Nicholson
Philadelphus inodorus f. quadranguliflorus S.Y.Hu
Philadelphus inodorus var. carolinus S.Y.Hu
Philadelphus inodorus var. grandiflorus (Willd.) A.Gray
Philadelphus inodorus var. inodorus
Philadelphus inodorus var. laxus (Torr. & A.Gray) S.Y.Hu
Philadelphus inodorus var. strigosus Beadle
Philadelphus laxus C.C.Gmel.
Philadelphus laxus Schrad. ex DC.
Philadelphus laxus var. strigosus (Beadle) Rehder
Philadelphus macranthus Jacques
Philadelphus magnificus Koehne
Philadelphus strigosus (Beadle) Rydb.
Syringa inodora (L.) Moench

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
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.