Symplocos glauca(Thunb.) Koidz.

WFO wfo-0001141750 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Symplocos glauca, photographed by 岸本年郎
fig. a 岸本年郎, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-04-22 / obs. 189777990
Symplocos glauca, photographed by Jacy Chen
fig. b Jacy Chen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 110881217
Symplocos glauca, photographed by 呂一起(Lyu yi-chi)
fig. c 呂一起(Lyu yi-chi), CC BY 4.0 / obs. 181924495
Symplocos glauca, photographed by 呂一起(Lyu yi-chi)
fig. d 呂一起(Lyu yi-chi), CC BY 4.0 / obs. 160012939
Symplocos glauca, photographed by 呂一起(Lyu yi-chi)
fig. e 呂一起(Lyu yi-chi), CC BY 4.0 / obs. 158960302
Symplocos glauca, photographed by 葉子
fig. f 葉子, CC0 1.0 / obs. 33354818
Symplocos glauca, photographed by 呂一起(Lyu yi-chi)
fig. g 呂一起(Lyu yi-chi), CC BY 4.0 / obs. 32422485
Symplocos glauca, photographed by Cheng-Te Hsu
fig. h Cheng-Te Hsu, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 112708924

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
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Accession
K000227981
Filed as
Symplocos glauca (Thunb.) Koidz.
Det. by
Fritsch, P.W.; Zhou, L.
Collected
Forrest, G. 1924-06-01
Origin
CN
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 10 botanical countries

Regions where Symplocos glauca is native: China South-Central, China Southeast, Hainan, Japan, Nansei-shoto, Taiwan, Assam, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam China South-CentralChina SoutheastHainanJapanTaiwanAssamMyanmarThailandVietnam Nansei-shoto
Native distribution of Symplocos glauca, 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
China South-Central CHC ASIA-TEMPERATE
China Southeast CHS
Hainan CHH
Japan JAP
Nansei-shoto NNS
Taiwan TAI
Assam ASS ASIA-TROPICAL
Myanmar MYA
Thailand THA
Vietnam VIE

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 623 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 6.4 °C 11.2 °C 14.3 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 24.9 °C 28.7 °C 30.6 °C
Annual rainfall 2,341 mm 3,675 mm 4,818 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 138 mm 560 mm 877 mm

It is barely found anywhere that freezes. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 623 research-grade observations of Symplocos glauca 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 15 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.

  • Bobua glauca (Thunb.) Nakai
  • Bobua koshunensis (Kaneh.) Nemoto
  • Bobua neriifolia Miers
  • Dicalix glauca (Thunb.) Migo
  • Eugenioides neriifolium Kuntze
  • Laurus glauca Thunb.
  • Litsea glauca (Thunb.) Siebold
  • Myrsine thunbergii Tanaka
  • Neolitsea glauca (Thunb.) Koidz.
  • Symplocos glauca var. koshunensis (Kaneh.) S.S.Ying
  • Symplocos grandis Hand.-Mazz.
  • Symplocos koshunensis Kaneh.
  • Symplocos neriifolia Siebold & Zucc.
  • Symplocos oblanceolata Y.F.Wu
  • Tetradenia glauca (Thunb.) Matsum.

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.