Umbellularia californica(Hook. & Arn.) Nutt.

California bay

WFO wfo-0001071259 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Umbellularia californica, photographed by Michael Warner
fig. a Michael Warner, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-02 / obs. 202985174
Umbellularia californica, photographed by Michael Warner
fig. b Michael Warner, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202985395
Umbellularia californica, photographed by Ashwin Srinivasan
fig. c Ashwin Srinivasan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204312832
Umbellularia californica, photographed by Alex
fig. d Alex, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201560430
Umbellularia californica, photographed by Tom and T Herman
fig. e Tom and T Herman, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201218175
Umbellularia californica, photographed by Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng.
fig. f Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 193027471
Umbellularia californica, photographed by Ashwin Srinivasan
fig. g Ashwin Srinivasan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202960067
Umbellularia californica, photographed by arquivi
fig. h arquivi, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 196142055

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.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 1,143 observations

Peak flowering in Feb, from 1,143 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 10 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.

  • Drimophyllum pauciflorum Nutt.
  • Litsea californica (Hook. & Arn.) Benth. & Hook.f. ex B.D.Jacks.
  • Oreodaphne californica Nees
  • Oreodaphne regalis Regel
  • Persea causticans Pasq.
  • Tetranthera californica Hook. & Arn.
  • Tetranthera causticans (Pasq.) Pasq.
  • Umbellularia californica f. pendula Rehder
  • Umbellularia californica var. californica
  • Umbellularia californica var. fresnensis Eastw.

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.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.