Sasamorpha borealis(Hack.) Nakai

WFO wfo-0000897845 Accepted WFO 2026-06 3 photographs CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–c · 2 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 2 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.

Sasamorpha borealis, photographed by harum.koh
fig. a harum.koh, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2016-05-15 / obs. 3802537
Sasamorpha borealis, photographed by harum.koh
fig. b harum.koh, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 3378230
Sasamorpha borealis, photographed by harum.koh
fig. c harum.koh, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 3802538

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 3 botanical countries

Regions where Sasamorpha borealis is native: Japan, Korea, Sakhalin JapanSakhalin Korea
Native distribution of Sasamorpha borealis, 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
Japan JAP ASIA-TEMPERATE
Korea KOR
Sakhalin SAK

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.

Also published as 43 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.

  • Arundinaria borealis (Hack.) Makino
  • Arundinaria kurilensis var. spiculosa J.A.Schmidt
  • Arundinaria munsuensis Y.N.Lee
  • Arundinaria purpurascens Hack.
  • Bambusa borealis Hack.
  • Bambusa purpurascens (Hack.) Makino
  • Neosasamorpha tobaeana (Makino & Uchida) Tatew.
  • Pseudosasa purpurascens (Hack.) Makino
  • Pseudosasa spiculosa (J.A.Schmidt) Makino
  • Pseudosasa spiculosa f. angustior Makino
  • Sasa amabilis Makino & Nakai
  • Sasa borealis (Hack.) Makino & Shibata
  • Sasa borealis subsp. viridescens (Nakai) Demoly
  • Sasa borealis var. viridescens (Nakai) Yonek.
  • Sasa chiisanensis (Nakai) Y.N.Lee
  • Sasa morotonensis Koidz.
  • Sasa purpurascens (Hack.) E.G.Camus
  • Sasa spiculosa (J.A.Schmidt) Makino
  • Sasa spiculosa f. angustior Makino
  • Sasa spiculosa var. subpubescens Makino & Uchida
  • Sasa tobaeana Makino & Uchida
  • Sasa tobaeana var. pilosa Makino & Uchida
  • Sasamorpha amabilis Nakai
  • Sasamorpha borealis var. amabilis (Nakai) Hiyama

and 19 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. 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.