Pimenta dioica(L.) Merr.

AllspiceJamaican pepperallspice

WFO wfo-0000273391 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Pimenta dioica, photographed by Kevin Faccenda
fig. a Kevin Faccenda, CC BY 4.0 / 2020-09-17 / obs. 101579316
Pimenta dioica, photographed by lisong
fig. b lisong, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 29361245
Pimenta dioica, photographed by Kevin Faccenda
fig. c Kevin Faccenda, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 180748128
Pimenta dioica, photographed by Kevin Faccenda
fig. d Kevin Faccenda, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 176555494
Pimenta dioica, photographed by Kevin Faccenda
fig. e Kevin Faccenda, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 151948194
Pimenta dioica, photographed by Kevin Faccenda
fig. f Kevin Faccenda, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 147451639
Pimenta dioica, photographed by Kevin Faccenda
fig. g Kevin Faccenda, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 147454913
Pimenta dioica, photographed by Kevin Faccenda
fig. h Kevin Faccenda, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 131466872

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
205480
Filed as
Pimenta dioica (L.) Merr.
Det. by
I. Vandebroek 2007-01-25
Collected
I. Vandebroek 2007-01-19
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 13 botanical countries

Regions where Pimenta dioica is native: Mexico Gulf, Mexico Southeast, Mexico Southwest, Bahamas, Belize, Cayman Is., Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua Mexico GulfMexico SoutheastMexico SouthwestBelizeCosta RicaCubaDominican RepublicGuatemalaHondurasJamaicaNicaragua BahamasCayman Is.
Native distribution of Pimenta dioica, 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
Bahamas BAH SOUTHERN AMERICA
Belize BLZ
Cayman Is. CAY
Costa Rica COS
Cuba CUB
Dominican Republic DOM
Guatemala GUA
Honduras HON
Jamaica JAM
Nicaragua NIC
Mexico Gulf MXG NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Southeast MXT
Mexico Southwest MXS

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 231 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 13.8 °C 19.7 °C 21.2 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 25.1 °C 27.0 °C 34.2 °C
Annual rainfall 832 mm 1,449 mm 2,734 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 98 mm 141 mm 349 mm

It is not found anywhere that gets close to freezing. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 231 research-grade observations of Pimenta dioica 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 28 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.

  • Caryophyllus pimenta (L.) Mill.
  • Eugenia micrantha Bertol.
  • Eugenia pimenta (L.) DC.
  • Eugenia pimenta var. longifolia DC.
  • Eugenia pimenta var. ovalifolia DC.
  • Evanesca crassifolia Raf.
  • Evanesca micrantha Bertol.
  • Myrtus aromatica Salisb.
  • Myrtus aromatica Poir.
  • Myrtus dioica L.
  • Myrtus pimenta L.
  • Myrtus pimenta var. brevifolia Hayne
  • Myrtus pimenta var. longifolia Sims
  • Myrtus piperita Sessé & Moc.
  • Pimenta aromatica Kostel.
  • Pimenta communis Benth. & Hook.f.
  • Pimenta communis Lindl.
  • Pimenta officinalis Lindl.
  • Pimenta officinalis var. cumanensis Schiede & Deppe
  • Pimenta officinalis var. longifolia (Sims) O.Berg
  • Pimenta officinalis var. ovalifolia (DC.) O.Berg
  • Pimenta officinalis var. tenuifolia O.Berg
  • Pimenta pimenta (L.) H.Karst.
  • Pimenta vulgaris Bello

and 4 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.
  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.