Celastrus scandensL.

American bittersweet

WFO wfo-0000592929 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Celastrus scandens, photographed by Eric Schmidt
fig. a Eric Schmidt, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-02-27 / obs. 182492292
Celastrus scandens, photographed by Marilynn Miller
fig. b Marilynn Miller, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203504200
Celastrus scandens, photographed by Eric Schmidt
fig. c Eric Schmidt, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 182486748
Celastrus scandens, photographed by T. J. Crow
fig. d T. J. Crow, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 177744837
Celastrus scandens, photographed by Thomas Koffel
fig. e Thomas Koffel, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 176962679
Celastrus scandens, photographed by Eric Schmidt
fig. f Eric Schmidt, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 182490130
Celastrus scandens, photographed by Marilynn Miller
fig. g Marilynn Miller, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 174744245
Celastrus scandens, photographed by Jean Sorensen
fig. h Jean Sorensen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 173181414

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 = 206 observations

Peak flowering in Jun, from 206 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 3 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.

  • Celastrus bullatus L.
  • Euonymus scandens (L.) E.H.L.Krause
  • Evonymoides scandens (L.) Medik.

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.