Celastrus orbiculatusThunb.

Asian bittersweet

WFO wfo-0000592852 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Celastrus orbiculatus, photographed by Michael J. Papay
fig. a Michael J. Papay, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-05 / obs. 203586829
Celastrus orbiculatus, photographed by Michael J. Papay
fig. b Michael J. Papay, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203301446
Celastrus orbiculatus, photographed by Kristof Zyskowski
fig. c Kristof Zyskowski, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203232726
Celastrus orbiculatus, photographed by Tom Scavo
fig. d Tom Scavo, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203200827
Celastrus orbiculatus, photographed by Randy A Nonenmacher
fig. e Randy A Nonenmacher, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204564532
Celastrus orbiculatus, photographed by Dilrukshan Priyantha Wijesinghe
fig. f Dilrukshan Priyantha Wijesinghe, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203535625
Celastrus orbiculatus, photographed by Michael J. Papay
fig. g Michael J. Papay, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202709344
Celastrus orbiculatus, photographed by Tom Field
fig. h Tom Field, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202587244

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 = 868 observations

Peak flowering in May, from 868 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 22 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.

  • Catha articulata (Thunb.) G.Don
  • Celastrus articulata hort. ex Koehne
  • Celastrus articulatus Thunb.
  • Celastrus articulatus var. humilis Matsum.
  • Celastrus articulatus var. orbiculatus (Thunb.) Chen H.Wang
  • Celastrus articulatus var. papillosus Nakai ex H.Hara
  • Celastrus crispulus Regel
  • Celastrus insularis Koidz.
  • Celastrus jeholensis Nakai
  • Celastrus lancifolius Nakai
  • Celastrus orbiculatus f. aureoarillatus (Honda) Ohwi
  • Celastrus orbiculatus f. major Loes.
  • Celastrus orbiculatus f. papillosus (Nakai ex H.Hara) H.Hara
  • Celastrus orbiculatus var. aureoarillatus Honda
  • Celastrus orbiculatus var. papillosus (Nakai ex H.Hara) Ohwi
  • Celastrus orbiculatus var. punctatus Rehder
  • Celastrus orbiculatus var. strigillosus Hara
  • Celastrus orbiculatus var. strigillosus (Nakai) Makino
  • Celastrus strigillosus Nakai
  • Celastrus tatarinowii Rupr.
  • Celastrus versicolor Nakai
  • Ilex leucantha Hassk.

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.