Vitex rotundifoliaL.f.

roundleaf chastetree

WFO wfo-0000333413 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Vitex rotundifolia, photographed by Tyler Bishop
fig. a Tyler Bishop, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-15 / obs. 198006097

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 32 botanical countries

Regions where Vitex rotundifolia is native: China North-Central, China Southeast, Japan, Kazan-retto, Korea, Manchuria, Nansei-shoto, Ogasawara-shoto, Taiwan, Borneo, India, Jawa, Lesser Sunda Is., Malaya, Maluku, New Guinea, Philippines, South China Sea, Sri Lanka, Sulawesi, Sumatera, Thailand, Vietnam, Northern Territory, Queensland, Western Australia, Fiji, Hawaii, New Caledonia, Samoa, Society Is., Vanuatu China North-CentralChina SoutheastJapanManchuriaTaiwanBorneoIndiaJawaLesser Sunda Is.MalayaMalukuNew GuineaPhilippinesSri LankaSulawesiSumateraThailandVietnamNorthern TerritoryQueenslandWestern AustraliaFijiHawaiiNew Caledonia KoreaNansei-shotoSouth China SeaSamoaSociety Is.Vanuatu
Native distribution of Vitex rotundifolia, 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
Borneo BOR ASIA-TROPICAL
India IND
Jawa JAW
Lesser Sunda Is. LSI
Malaya MLY
Maluku MOL
New Guinea NWG
Philippines PHI
South China Sea SCS
Sri Lanka SRL
Sulawesi SUL
Sumatera SUM
Thailand THA
Vietnam VIE
China North-Central CHN ASIA-TEMPERATE
China Southeast CHS
Japan JAP
Kazan-retto KZN
Korea KOR
Manchuria CHM
Nansei-shoto NNS
Ogasawara-shoto OGA
Taiwan TAI
Fiji FIJ PACIFIC
Hawaii HAW
New Caledonia NWC
Samoa SAM
Society Is. SCI
Vanuatu VAN
Northern Territory NTA AUSTRALASIA
Queensland QLD
Western Australia WAU

Not drawn on the map: Kazan-retto, Ogasawara-shoto. We hold no public-domain boundary for these regions, so they are listed rather than guessed at.

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 408 in flower of 500 examined

Proportion of examined Vitex rotundifolia in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 11 16 69% 44% to 86%
Feb 3 12 25% 9% to 53%
Mar 7 11 64% 35% to 85%
Apr 13 24 54% 35% to 72%
May 48 56 86% 74% to 93%
Jun 54 66 82% 71% to 89%
Jul 62 69 90% 81% to 95%
Aug 70 75 93% 85% to 97%
Sep 58 71 82% 71% to 89%
Oct 48 54 89% 78% to 95%
Nov 19 27 70% 52% to 84%
Dec 15 19 79% 57% to 91%

Peak flowering in Aug. Each bar is the share of Vitex rotundifolia 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. 408 of 500 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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 1,953 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 1.9 °C 16.0 °C 21.7 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 26.2 °C 28.9 °C 30.5 °C
Annual rainfall 755 mm 1,778 mm 3,634 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 53 mm 180 mm 654 mm

It is found where winters are cool but frost is light or absent. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,953 research-grade observations of Vitex rotundifolia 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. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 14 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.

  • Vitex agnus-castus var. ovata (Thunb.) Kuntze
  • Vitex ovata Thunb.
  • Vitex ovata var. subtrisecta Kuntze
  • Vitex repens Blanco
  • Vitex rotundifolia f. albescens Hiyama
  • Vitex rotundifolia f. albiflora Y.N.Lee
  • Vitex rotundifolia f. albiflora S.S.Ying
  • Vitex rotundifolia f. rosea Satomi
  • Vitex trifolia subsp. litoralis Steenis
  • Vitex trifolia var. obovata Benth.
  • Vitex trifolia var. ovata (Thunb.) Makino
  • Vitex trifolia var. repens (Blanco) Ridl.
  • Vitex trifolia var. simplicifolia Cham.
  • Vitex trifolia var. unifoliolata Schauer

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.