Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations
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.
Native range 18 botanical countries
| Region | TDWG code | Continent |
|---|---|---|
| Bahamas | BAH | SOUTHERN AMERICA |
| Brazil North | BZN | |
| Brazil Northeast | BZE | |
| Brazil South | BZS | |
| Brazil Southeast | BZL | |
| Brazil West-Central | BZC | |
| Cuba | CUB | |
| Dominican Republic | DOM | |
| French Guiana | FRG | |
| Guatemala | GUA | |
| Haiti | HAI | |
| Jamaica | JAM | |
| Leeward Is. | LEE | |
| Puerto Rico | PUE | |
| Trinidad-Tobago | TRT | |
| Venezuela | VEN | |
| Florida | FLA | NORTHERN AMERICA |
| Mexico Southeast | MXT |
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 120 observations
| Condition | 5th percentile | Median | 95th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coldest month, mean daily low | 9.1 °C | 16.1 °C | 19.8 °C |
| Warmest month, mean daily high | 24.7 °C | 30.3 °C | 30.9 °C |
| Annual rainfall | 1,431 mm | 1,555 mm | 2,037 mm |
| Rainfall in the driest quarter | 135 mm | 153 mm | 408 mm |
It is barely found anywhere that freezes. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 120 research-grade observations of Prunus myrtifolia 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 Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.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 14 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.
- Celastrus myrtifolius L.
- Cerasus sphaerocarpa (Sw.) Loisel.
- Lauro-cerasus myrtifolia (L.) Britton
- Lauro-cerasus sphaerocarpa (Sw.) M.Roem.
- Lauro-cerasus sphaerocarpa var. brasiliensis M.Roem.
- Laurocerasus myrtifolia Britton
- Prunus acutissima Urb.
- Prunus dussii Krug & Urb.
- Prunus myrtifolia var. brasiliensis (M.Roem.) Koehne
- Prunus myrtifolia var. glaziovii Koehne
- Prunus myrtifolia var. myrtifolia
- Prunus pleuradenia Griseb.
- Prunus sphaerocarpa Sw.
- Prunus tikalana Lundell
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.