Ligustrum sinense (Chinese privet)

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Ligustrum sinense, photographed by Bonnie Semmling — fig. a Bonnie Semmling, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-30 / obs. 202348512

Ligustrum sinense, photographed by stephen — fig. c stephen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199756384

Ligustrum sinense, photographed by Florencia Grattarola — fig. d Florencia Grattarola, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195783781

Ligustrum sinense, photographed by Rich Sommer — fig. e Rich Sommer, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195917289

Ligustrum sinense, photographed by Nicholas Stockmaster — fig. f Nicholas Stockmaster, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201144100

Ligustrum sinense, photographed by kayler09 — fig. g kayler09, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201946542

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.

Ligustrum vulgarethis one called it 3x compare

Flowering n = 7,796 observations

111

3501

3402

278

123

169

Flowering observations of Ligustrum sinense by month
Month	Observations
Jan	17
Feb	34
Mar	111
Apr	3501
May	3402
Jun	278
Jul	49
Aug	22
Sep	24
Oct	123
Nov	169
Dec	66

Peak flowering in Apr, from 7,796 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 32 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.

Ligustrum bodinieri H.Lév.
Ligustrum calleryanum Decne.
Ligustrum chinense Carrière
Ligustrum coryanum W.W.Sm.
Ligustrum deciduum Hemsl.
Ligustrum fortunei C.K.Schneid.
Ligustrum groffiae Merr.
Ligustrum indicum (Lour.) Merr.
Ligustrum matsudae Kaneh. ex T.Shimizu & M.T.Kao
Ligustrum microcarpum Kaneh. & Sasaki
Ligustrum microcarpum var. shakaroense (Kaneh.) Shimizu & T.C.Kao
Ligustrum myrianthum Diels
Ligustrum nokoense Masam. & T.Mori
Ligustrum nokoensis Masam. & K.Mori
Ligustrum ovalifolium unranked multiflorum Bowles
Ligustrum robustum var. chayuense P.Y.Pai
Ligustrum rugosulum W.W.Sm.
Ligustrum shakaroense Kaneh.
Ligustrum sinense unranked nanum Carrière
Ligustrum sinense var. multiflorum (Bowles) Bean
Ligustrum sinense var. nitidum Rehder
Ligustrum sinense var. rugosulum (W.W.Sm.) M.C.Chang
Ligustrum sinense var. stauntonii (DC.) Rehder
Ligustrum sinense var. villosum (May) Rehder

and 8 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.