Styphnolobium japonicum(L.) Schott

Japanese pagoda treeScholar tree

WFO wfo-0000186724 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Styphnolobium japonicum, photographed by Zinogre
fig. a Zinogre, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-05-01 / obs. 192772694
Styphnolobium japonicum, photographed by Luke Wildfire
fig. b Luke Wildfire, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 157253954
Styphnolobium japonicum, photographed by Светлана Царахова
fig. c Светлана Царахова, CC0 1.0 / obs. 155179629
Styphnolobium japonicum, photographed by Michael Ellis
fig. d Michael Ellis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 21952058
Styphnolobium japonicum, photographed by Carrie Seltzer
fig. e Carrie Seltzer, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 184266133
Styphnolobium japonicum, photographed by Emily Summerbell
fig. f Emily Summerbell, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 177573266
Styphnolobium japonicum, photographed by Karim Haddad
fig. g Karim Haddad, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 170347235
Styphnolobium japonicum, photographed by Elliot Greiner
fig. h Elliot Greiner, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 170247187

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 Styphnolobium japonicum is native: China North-Central, China South-Central, China Southeast China North-CentralChina South-CentralChina Southeast
Native distribution of Styphnolobium japonicum, 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
China North-Central CHN ASIA-TEMPERATE
China South-Central CHC
China Southeast CHS

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 699 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -7.7 °C -2.7 °C 5.3 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 23.4 °C 28.7 °C 32.1 °C
Annual rainfall 446 mm 1,049 mm 1,303 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 24 mm 183 mm 275 mm

It is found where winters bring hard frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 699 research-grade observations of Styphnolobium japonicum 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 37 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.

  • Anagyris chinensis Spreng.
  • Anagyris foetida Lour.
  • Anagyris sinensis Steud.
  • Macrotropis foetida DC.
  • Ormosia esquirolii H.Lév.
  • Pongamia chinensis DC.
  • Radiusia chinensis (Spreng.) Heynh.
  • Robinia mitis Lour.
  • Sophora angustifoliola Q.Q.Liu & H.Y.Ye
  • Sophora griffithii subsp. korolkowii Yakovlev
  • Sophora japonica L.
  • Sophora japonica f. columnaris Schwer.
  • Sophora japonica f. oligophylla Spach
  • Sophora japonica f. oligophylla Franch.
  • Sophora japonica f. pendula (Lodd. ex Sweet) Zabel
  • Sophora japonica f. praecox Schwer.
  • Sophora japonica f. violacea (Carrière) Zabel
  • Sophora japonica var. pendula Lodd. ex Sweet
  • Sophora japonica var. pubescens (Tausch) Bosse
  • Sophora japonica var. vestita Rehder
  • Sophora japonica var. violacea Carrière
  • Sophora korolkowi Diecks
  • Sophora korolkowi Dieck ex Koehne
  • Sophora korolkowii Dieck ex Koehne

and 13 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.