Salix arbutifoliaPall.

WFO wfo-0000929006 Accepted WFO 2026-06 5 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–e · 3 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 3 times, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Salix arbutifolia, photographed by Oleg Kosterin
fig. a Oleg Kosterin, CC BY 4.0 / 2020-08-03 / obs. 98851217

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 13 botanical countries

Regions where Salix arbutifolia is native: Buryatiya, China North-Central, Chita, Inner Mongolia, Irkutsk, Japan, Khabarovsk, Korea, Kuril Is., Magadan, Primorye, Sakhalin, Yakutiya BuryatiyaChina North-CentralChitaInner MongoliaIrkutskJapanKhabarovskMagadanPrimoryeSakhalinYakutiya Korea
Native distribution of Salix arbutifolia, 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. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Buryatiya BRY ASIA-TEMPERATE
China North-Central CHN
Chita CTA
Inner Mongolia CHI
Irkutsk IRK
Japan JAP
Khabarovsk KHA
Korea KOR
Kuril Is. KUR
Magadan MAG
Primorye PRM
Sakhalin SAK
Yakutiya YAK

Not drawn on the map: Kuril Is.. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is listed rather than guessed at.

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 452 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -37.0 °C -22.2 °C -18.0 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 14.2 °C 20.6 °C 23.9 °C
Annual rainfall 472 mm 816 mm 1,095 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 22 mm 88 mm 149 mm

It is found where winters are arctic. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 452 research-grade observations of Salix arbutifolia 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 8 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.

  • Chosenia arbutifolia (Pall.) A.K.Skvortsov
  • Chosenia bracteosa Nakai
  • Chosenia eucalyptoides Nakai
  • Chosenia macrolepis (Turcz.) Kom.
  • Chosenia splendida (Nakai) Nakai
  • Salix bracteosa Turcz. ex Trautv. & C.A.Mey.
  • Salix macrolepis Turcz.
  • Salix splendida Nakai

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. 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.