Sideroxylon foetidissimumJacq.

false mastic

WFO wfo-0000310731 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Sideroxylon foetidissimum, photographed by Alexis López Hernández
fig. a Alexis López Hernández, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-15 / obs. 197996056

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.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
1029162
Filed as
Sideroxylon foetidissimum Jacq.
Det. by
G. J. Breckon 2003-11-21
Collected
N. L. Britton 1914-02-20
Origin
PR
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 15 botanical countries

Regions where Sideroxylon foetidissimum is native: Florida, Mexico Southeast, Bahamas, Belize, Cayman Is., Cuba, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Haiti, Jamaica, Leeward Is., Puerto Rico, Southwest Caribbean, Trinidad-Tobago, Windward Is. FloridaMexico SoutheastBelizeCubaDominican RepublicGuatemalaHaitiJamaicaPuerto RicoSouthwest CaribbeanTrinidad-Tobago BahamasCayman Is.Leeward Is.Windward Is.
Native distribution of Sideroxylon foetidissimum, 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
Bahamas BAH SOUTHERN AMERICA
Belize BLZ
Cayman Is. CAY
Cuba CUB
Dominican Republic DOM
Guatemala GUA
Haiti HAI
Jamaica JAM
Leeward Is. LEE
Puerto Rico PUE
Southwest Caribbean SWC
Trinidad-Tobago TRT
Windward Is. WIN
Florida FLA NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Southeast MXT

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 374 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 14.4 °C 17.6 °C 23.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 28.4 °C 30.0 °C 31.2 °C
Annual rainfall 1,204 mm 1,502 mm 1,972 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 133 mm 168 mm 302 mm

It is not found anywhere that gets close to freezing. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 374 research-grade observations of Sideroxylon foetidissimum 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 30 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.

  • Achras pallida (Sw.) Poir.
  • Bumelia auzuba Roem. & Schult.
  • Bumelia foetidissima (Jacq.) Willd.
  • Bumelia lucida Roem. & Schult.
  • Bumelia mastichodendrum (Jacq.) Roem. & Schult.
  • Bumelia pallida Sw.
  • Bumelia pauciflora Roem. & Schult.
  • Mastichodendron foetidissimum (Jacq.) H.J.Lam
  • Mastichodendron foetidissimum subsp. gaumeri (Pittier) Cronquist
  • Mastichodendron foetidissimum subsp. typicum Cronquist
  • Mastichodendron foetidissimum var. cuneatum Kitan.
  • Mastichodendron foetidissimum var. gaumeri (Pittier) L.O.Williams
  • Mastichodendron gaumeri (Pittier) Lundell
  • Mastichodendron sloaneanum Box & Philipson
  • Mastichodendron tikalense Lundell
  • Sideroxylon acouma A.DC.
  • Sideroxylon domingense Urb.
  • Sideroxylon foetidissimum var. quadriloculare (Pierre ex Urb) Dubard
  • Sideroxylon gaumeri Pittier
  • Sideroxylon jamaicense Urb.
  • Sideroxylon lucidum Sol. ex Lam.
  • Sideroxylon mastichodendron Jacq.
  • Sideroxylon mastichodendron var. pallidum (Sw.) M.Gómez
  • Sideroxylon nitidum Lam.

and 6 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.