Rubus rosifoliusSm.

West Indian raspberry

WFO wfo-0001007197 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Rubus rosifolius, photographed by Greg Tasney
fig. a Greg Tasney, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-06-05 / obs. 203443277

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 21 botanical countries

Regions where Rubus rosifolius is native: China North-Central, China South-Central, China Southeast, Taiwan, Assam, Bismarck Archipelago, Borneo, Cambodia, East Himalaya, India, Jawa, Laos, Myanmar, Nepal, New Guinea, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Sulawesi, Thailand, Vietnam, West Himalaya China North-CentralChina South-CentralChina SoutheastTaiwanAssamBismarck ArchipelagoBorneoCambodiaEast HimalayaIndiaJawaLaosMyanmarNepalNew GuineaPhilippinesSri LankaSulawesiThailandVietnamWest Himalaya
Native distribution of Rubus rosifolius, 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
Assam ASS ASIA-TROPICAL
Bismarck Archipelago BIS
Borneo BOR
Cambodia CBD
East Himalaya EHM
India IND
Jawa JAW
Laos LAO
Myanmar MYA
Nepal NEP
New Guinea NWG
Philippines PHI
Sri Lanka SRL
Sulawesi SUL
Thailand THA
Vietnam VIE
West Himalaya WHM
China North-Central CHN ASIA-TEMPERATE
China South-Central CHC
China Southeast CHS
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.

Flowering 369 in flower of 610 examined

Proportion of examined Rubus rosifolius in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 42 67 63% 51% to 73%
Feb 32 50 64% 50% to 76%
Mar 28 50 56% 42% to 69%
Apr 24 57 42% 30% to 55%
May 18 41 44% 30% to 59%
Jun 36 56 64% 51% to 76%
Jul 30 41 73% 58% to 84%
Aug 26 41 63% 48% to 76%
Sep 28 42 67% 52% to 79%
Oct 42 65 65% 52% to 75%
Nov 21 46 46% 32% to 60%
Dec 42 54 78% 65% to 87%

Peak flowering in Dec. Each bar is the share of Rubus rosifolius observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 369 of 610 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 41 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.

  • Rubus apoensis Elmer
  • Rubus chinensis Ser.
  • Rubus comintanus Blanco
  • Rubus commersonii Poir.
  • Rubus commersonii var. simpliciflorus Koidz.
  • Rubus coronarius (Sims) Sweet
  • Rubus dosedlae Gilli
  • Rubus eglanteria Tratt.
  • Rubus glandulosopunctatus Hayata
  • Rubus hirsutus var. glabellus (Focke) Wuzhi
  • Rubus hopingensis Y.C.Liu & F.Y.Lu
  • Rubus jamaicensis Blanco
  • Rubus javanicus Blume
  • Rubus mingendensis Gilli
  • Rubus paniculatus C.B.Clarke
  • Rubus parvirosifolius Hayata
  • Rubus polyphyllarius (Cardot) Koidz.
  • Rubus rosaefolius Sm.
  • Rubus rosifolius Sm. ex Baker
  • Rubus rosifolius f. coronarius (Sims) Focke
  • Rubus rosifolius f. monophyllus Backer
  • Rubus rosifolius f. paucijugus Hallier
  • Rubus rosifolius lus. personatus Focke
  • Rubus rosifolius unranked normalis Kuntze

and 17 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.