Pterocarya stenoptera (Chinese wingnut)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Pterocarya stenoptera, photographed by Zinogre — fig. a Zinogre, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2021-06-01 / obs. 133081480

Pterocarya stenoptera, photographed by Ong Jyh Seng — fig. c Ong Jyh Seng, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 50270836

Pterocarya stenoptera, photographed by Marco Mussita — fig. d Marco Mussita, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 17777695

Pterocarya stenoptera, photographed by harum.koh — fig. e harum.koh, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 2544991

Pterocarya stenoptera, photographed by W Rao — fig. f W Rao, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205321516

Pterocarya stenoptera, photographed by Andrew Conboy — fig. g Andrew Conboy, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 186451058

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 7 botanical countries

Native distribution of Pterocarya stenoptera, 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
China North-Central	CHN	ASIA-TEMPERATE
China South-Central	CHC
China Southeast	CHS
Hainan	CHH
Inner Mongolia	CHI
Manchuria	CHM
Taiwan	TAI

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 291 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	-9.0 °C	-1.6 °C	5.7 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	24.9 °C	30.8 °C	33.5 °C
Annual rainfall	580 mm	1,198 mm	2,230 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	11 mm	145 mm	256 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 291 research-grade observations of Pterocarya stenoptera 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 10 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.

Acer mairei H.Lév.
Pterocarya chinensis Lavallée
Pterocarya esquirolii H.Lév.
Pterocarya japonica Dippel
Pterocarya laevigata Lavallée
Pterocarya stenoptera var. brevialata Pamp.
Pterocarya stenoptera var. kouitchensis Franch.
Pterocarya stenoptera var. sinensis Graebn.
Pterocarya stenoptera var. typica Franch.
Pterocarya stenoptera var. zhijiangensis Z.E.Chao & C.J.Zheng

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.