Frangula caroliniana(Walter) A.Gray

Carolina buckthorn

WFO wfo-0000691882 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Frangula caroliniana, photographed by Joseph McPhail
fig. a Joseph McPhail, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-13 / obs. 205932849
Frangula caroliniana, photographed by Joseph Aubert
fig. b Joseph Aubert, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 185901334
Frangula caroliniana, photographed by Joseph Aubert
fig. c Joseph Aubert, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199184390
Frangula caroliniana, photographed by Laura Clark
fig. d Laura Clark, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 196615134
Frangula caroliniana, photographed by Adam Kranz
fig. e Adam Kranz, CC0 1.0 / obs. 191793366
Frangula caroliniana, photographed by Reid Hardin
fig. f Reid Hardin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 171391804
Frangula caroliniana, photographed by Michelle W. （鍾偉瑋）
fig. g Michelle W. （鍾偉瑋）, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 179894125
Frangula caroliniana, photographed by Reid Hardin
fig. h Reid Hardin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 171391498

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 = 224 observations

Peak flowering in May, from 224 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 9 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.

  • Bassovia hebepoda Dunal
  • Frangula caroliniana var. molils (Fernald) Mohlenbr.
  • Frangula fragilis Raf.
  • Rhamnus canadensis hort. ex Koch
  • Rhamnus caroliniana Walter
  • Rhamnus caroliniana var. caroliniana
  • Rhamnus caroliniana var. mollis Fernald
  • Rhamnus virginica Page
  • Sarcomphalus carolinianus (Walter) Raf.

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.