Ailanthus altissima (tree-of-heaven)

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Ailanthus altissima, photographed by Daniel Cahen — fig. a Daniel Cahen, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-12 / obs. 205521916

Ailanthus altissima, photographed by Nico — fig. b Nico, CC0 1.0 / obs. 205509659

Ailanthus altissima, photographed by Corrina Chase — fig. c Corrina Chase, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205201605

Ailanthus altissima, photographed by christophergs — fig. e christophergs, CC0 1.0 / obs. 204978600

Ailanthus altissima, photographed by Yann Kemper — fig. f Yann Kemper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 203940530

Ailanthus altissima, photographed by Dilrukshan Priyantha Wijesinghe — fig. g Dilrukshan Priyantha Wijesinghe, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204087557

Ailanthus altissima, photographed by Dave Richardson — fig. h Dave Richardson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204878825

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 = 618 observations

141

351

Flowering observations of Ailanthus altissima by month
Month	Observations
Jan	3
Feb	0
Mar	0
Apr	26
May	141
Jun	351
Jul	57
Aug	18
Sep	12
Oct	5
Nov	2
Dec	3

Peak flowering in Jun, from 618 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 43 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.

Ailanthus altissima f. erythrocarpa (Carrière) Rehder
Ailanthus altissima f. pendulifolia (Dippel) Rehder
Ailanthus altissima f. rubrus (H.Jaeger) Geerinck
Ailanthus altissima var. erythrocarpus (Carrière) Rehder
Ailanthus altissima var. leucoxylus B.C.Ding & T.B.Chao
Ailanthus altissima var. microphyllus B.C.Ding & T.B.Chao
Ailanthus altissima var. pendulifolia (Dippel) Rehder
Ailanthus altissima var. ramosissimus B.C.Ding & T.B.Chao
Ailanthus cacodendron (Ehrh.) Schinz & Thell.
Ailanthus cacodendron var. sutchuenensis (Dode) Rehder & E.H.Wilson
Ailanthus erythrocarpus Carrière
Ailanthus esquirolii H.Lév.
Ailanthus giraldii Dode
Ailanthus giraldii var. duclouxii Dode
Ailanthus glandulosa f. erythocarpa (Carrière) C.K.Schneid.
Ailanthus glandulosa f. pendulifolia Dippel
Ailanthus glandulosa f. rubra (H.Jaeger) Dippel
Ailanthus glandulosa unranked foliis-variegatis Oudem.
Ailanthus glandulosa var. erythrocarpa (Carrière) Mouill.
Ailanthus glandulosa var. erythrocarpus (Carrière) Mouill.
Ailanthus glandulosa var. pendula G.Nicholson
Ailanthus glandulosa var. pendulifolia (Dippel) Carrière ex Rehder
Ailanthus glandulosa var. spinosa M.Vilm. & Bois
Ailanthus glandulosa var. sutchuenensis (Dode) Rehder

and 19 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
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.