Schinus terebinthifolia (Brazilian Pepper Tree)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Schinus terebinthifolia, photographed by Greg Tasney — fig. a Greg Tasney, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-06-13 / obs. 205711647

Schinus terebinthifolia, photographed by Kevin Faccenda — fig. b Kevin Faccenda, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204055158

Schinus terebinthifolia, photographed by Tyler Bishop — fig. c Tyler Bishop, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 198478600

Schinus terebinthifolia, photographed by Leila Dasher — fig. e Leila Dasher, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 197482670

Schinus terebinthifolia, photographed by Daniel Dias — fig. f Daniel Dias, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 197366868

Schinus terebinthifolia, photographed by Tony Rebelo — fig. g Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 197333029

Schinus terebinthifolia, photographed by Enéas V. Gouvêa Junior — fig. h Enéas V. Gouvêa Junior, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 194525862

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 6 botanical countries

Native distribution of Schinus terebinthifolia, 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
Argentina Northeast	AGE	SOUTHERN AMERICA
Brazil Northeast	BZE
Brazil South	BZS
Brazil Southeast	BZL
Brazil West-Central	BZC
Paraguay	PAR

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 233 in flower of 1,800 examined

15%

21%

13%

11%

20%

42%

29%

Proportion of examined Schinus terebinthifolia in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	4	245	2%	1% to 4%
Feb	8	148	5%	3% to 10%
Mar	22	150	15%	10% to 21%
Apr	31	149	21%	15% to 28%
May	17	133	13%	8% to 20%
Jun	9	117	8%	4% to 14%
Jul	9	82	11%	6% to 20%
Aug	16	79	20%	13% to 30%
Sep	51	122	42%	33% to 51%
Oct	38	131	29%	22% to 37%
Nov	12	171	7%	4% to 12%
Dec	16	273	6%	4% to 9%

Peak flowering in Sep. Each bar is the share of Schinus terebinthifolia 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. 233 of 1,800 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 17 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.

Lithraea chichita Speg.
Rhus heptaphylla Hiern
Rhus schinoides Willd. ex Schult.
Rhus trijuga Poir.
Sarcotheca bahiensis Turcz.
Schinus aroeira Vell.
Schinus chichita Speg.
Schinus mellisii Engl.
Schinus mucronulata Mart.
Schinus mucronulatus Mart.
Schinus rhoifolia Mart.
Schinus terebinthifolia var. rhoifolius (Mart.) Engl.
Schinus terebinthifolius var. damazianus Beauverd
Schinus terebinthifolius var. glaziovianus Engl.
Schinus terebinthifolius var. pohlianus Engl.
Schinus terebinthifolius var. raddianus Engl.
Schinus terebinthifolius var. selloanus Engl.

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.