Polyscias oahuensis(A.Gray) Lowry & G.M.Plunkett

'ohe mauka

WFO wfo-0000918441 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Polyscias oahuensis, photographed by Kevin Faccenda
fig. a Kevin Faccenda, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-02-21 / obs. 180750261
Polyscias oahuensis, photographed by Kevin Faccenda
fig. b Kevin Faccenda, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 165885948
Polyscias oahuensis, photographed by Kevin Faccenda
fig. c Kevin Faccenda, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 153258025
Polyscias oahuensis, photographed by Kevin Faccenda
fig. d Kevin Faccenda, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 131462584
Polyscias oahuensis, photographed by Kevin Faccenda
fig. e Kevin Faccenda, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 131463367
Polyscias oahuensis, photographed by Kevin Faccenda
fig. f Kevin Faccenda, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 131462870
Polyscias oahuensis, photographed by Kevin Faccenda
fig. g Kevin Faccenda, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 177736193
Polyscias oahuensis, photographed by Kevin Faccenda
fig. h Kevin Faccenda, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 180748914

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
Smithsonian, US National Herbarium
Accession
US 3724556
Filed as
Polyscias oahuensis (A.Gray) Lowry & G.M.Plunkett
Det. by
Wagner, W. L., (BOT), Smithsonian Institution - National Museum of Natural History (UNITED STATES)
Collected
W. Gagne 1970-07-25
Origin
US
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC0 1.0)

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 1 botanical country

Regions where Polyscias oahuensis is native: Hawaii Hawaii
Native distribution of Polyscias oahuensis, 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
Hawaii HAW PACIFIC

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 95 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 16.5 °C 19.9 °C 21.8 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 21.7 °C 26.5 °C 28.0 °C
Annual rainfall 624 mm 1,210 mm 2,922 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 56 mm 192 mm 579 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 95 research-grade observations of Polyscias oahuensis 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 56 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.

  • Gastonia oahuensis A.Gray
  • Heptapleurum waimeae Wawra
  • Tetraplasandra kaalae (Hillebr.) Harms
  • Tetraplasandra kaalae var. multiplex Sherff
  • Tetraplasandra kahanana O.Deg. & Sherff
  • Tetraplasandra kohalae Skottsb.
  • Tetraplasandra lanaiensis Rock
  • Tetraplasandra lihuensis var. gracilipes Sherff
  • Tetraplasandra meiandra (Hillebr.) Harms
  • Tetraplasandra meiandra var. bisobtusa Sherff
  • Tetraplasandra meiandra var. bryanii Sherff
  • Tetraplasandra meiandra var. degeneri Sherff
  • Tetraplasandra meiandra var. hailiensis O.Deg. & Sherff
  • Tetraplasandra meiandra var. hillebrandii Sherff
  • Tetraplasandra meiandra var. hiloensis Sherff
  • Tetraplasandra meiandra var. leptomera Sherff
  • Tetraplasandra meiandra var. longipedunculata Skottsb.
  • Tetraplasandra meiandra var. makalehana Sherff
  • Tetraplasandra meiandra var. mauiensis Sherff
  • Tetraplasandra meiandra var. molokaiensis Skottsb.
  • Tetraplasandra meiandra var. occidentalis Skottsb.
  • Tetraplasandra meiandra var. olowaluana Sherff
  • Tetraplasandra meiandra var. ovalis Sherff
  • Tetraplasandra meiandra var. polyantha Sherff

and 32 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. USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol TEOA. public domain. 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.