Berberis thunbergiiDC.

Japanese barberry

WFO wfo-0000563924 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Berberis thunbergii, photographed by Erin Lalime
fig. a Erin Lalime, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-30 / obs. 202072922
Berberis thunbergii, photographed by Mark Apgar
fig. b Mark Apgar, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203638681
Berberis thunbergii, photographed by Steven Lamonde
fig. c Steven Lamonde, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202467930
Berberis thunbergii, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. d Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 201062274
Berberis thunbergii, photographed by Skyler Principe
fig. e Skyler Principe, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204304858
Berberis thunbergii, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. f Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 200293437
Berberis thunbergii, photographed by Stephen James McWilliam
fig. g Stephen James McWilliam, CC0 1.0 / obs. 201678926
Berberis thunbergii, photographed by Steven Lamonde
fig. h Steven Lamonde, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202459254

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 = 1,162 observations

Peak flowering in Apr, from 1,162 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 17 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.

  • Berberis maximowiczii Regel
  • Berberis thunbergii f. atropurpurea (Chenault) Rehder
  • Berberis thunbergii f. erecta Rehder
  • Berberis thunbergii f. grandiflora E.L.Wolf ex V.V.Byalt, L.V.Orlova & Potokin
  • Berberis thunbergii f. microcarpa E.L.Wolf ex V.V.Byalt, L.V.Orlova & Potokin
  • Berberis thunbergii f. minor (Rehder) Zabel
  • Berberis thunbergii f. obovata E.L.Wolf ex V.V.Byalt, L.V.Orlova & Potokin
  • Berberis thunbergii f. trispinosa E.L.Wolf ex V.V.Byalt, L.V.Orlova & Potokin
  • Berberis thunbergii var. argenteomarginata C.K.Schneid.
  • Berberis thunbergii var. atropurpurea Chenault
  • Berberis thunbergii var. erecta (Rehder) Ahrendt
  • Berberis thunbergii var. maximowiczii (Regel) Regel
  • Berberis thunbergii var. minor Rehder
  • Berberis thunbergii var. pluriflora Koehne
  • Berberis thunbergii var. pluriflora (Koehne) Rehder
  • Berberis thunbergii var. rubrifolia Ahrendt
  • Berberis thunbergii var. uniflora Koehne

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.