Platanus orientalisL.

Oriental PlaneOriental Plane-treeOriental planetree

WFO wfo-0000487086 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Platanus orientalis, photographed by Quentin Groom
fig. a Quentin Groom, CC0 1.0 / 2022-05-15 / obs. 197830529
Platanus orientalis, photographed by Troy Paterson
fig. b Troy Paterson, CC0 1.0 / obs. 190860128
Platanus orientalis, photographed by Eleftherios Katsillis
fig. c Eleftherios Katsillis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 190818101
Platanus orientalis, photographed by Stephen James McWilliam
fig. d Stephen James McWilliam, CC0 1.0 / obs. 164885838
Platanus orientalis, photographed by Susan Marley
fig. e Susan Marley, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 164795002
Platanus orientalis, photographed by Thor-Rune Hansen
fig. f Thor-Rune Hansen, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 155691631
Platanus orientalis, photographed by Eleftherios Katsillis
fig. g Eleftherios Katsillis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 121763566
Platanus orientalis, photographed by Eleftherios Katsillis
fig. h Eleftherios Katsillis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 117490810

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
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Accession
K000634767
Filed as
Platanus orientalis L.
Det. by
Lindeburg, H.
Collected
Lindberg, H. 1939-06-09
Origin
CY
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 15 botanical countries

Regions where Platanus orientalis is native: Cyprus, East Aegean Is., Iran, Iraq, Lebanon-Syria, North Caucasus, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Kriti, NW. Balkan Pen., Sicilia CyprusEast Aegean Is.IranIraqLebanon-SyriaNorth CaucasusTranscaucasusTürkiyeAlbaniaBulgariaGreeceItalyKritiNW. Balkan Pen.Sicilia
Native distribution of Platanus orientalis, 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.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Cyprus CYP ASIA-TEMPERATE
East Aegean Is. EAI
Iran IRN
Iraq IRQ
Lebanon-Syria LBS
North Caucasus NCS
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR
Albania ALB EUROPE
Bulgaria BUL
Greece GRC
Italy ITA
Kriti KRI
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Sicilia SIC

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 868 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -6.0 °C 2.2 °C 11.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 21.4 °C 28.1 °C 34.1 °C
Annual rainfall 385 mm 745 mm 1,402 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 2 mm 36 mm 189 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 868 research-grade observations of Platanus orientalis 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 34 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.

  • Platanus algeriensis K.Koch
  • Platanus cretica Dode
  • Platanus digitata G.Gordon
  • Platanus digitata Gord.
  • Platanus digitifolia Palib.
  • Platanus elongata Steud.
  • Platanus insularis Kotschy ex Koehne
  • Platanus laciniata K.Koch
  • Platanus macrophylla Cree ex W.H.Baxter
  • Platanus nana K.Koch
  • Platanus nepalensis hort. ex W.H.Baxter
  • Platanus nepalensis Morren
  • Platanus orientalior Dode
  • Platanus orientalis f. digitata (Gordon) Jankó
  • Platanus orientalis f. liquidambarifolia K.Koch
  • Platanus orientalis f. occidentaloides Candargy
  • Platanus orientalis f. pendula K.Koch
  • Platanus orientalis var. elongata Aiton
  • Platanus orientalis var. insularis A.DC.
  • Platanus orientalis var. laciniata J.Bommer
  • Platanus orientalis var. nepalensis (Morren) Wesm.
  • Platanus orientalis var. rosenthalii T.Moore
  • Platanus orientalis var. undulata Aiton
  • Platanus palmata Moench

and 10 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.