Ligustrum vulgareL.

Common Privet

WFO wfo-0000815984 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Ligustrum vulgare, photographed by Pete Bradshaw
fig. a Pete Bradshaw, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-11 / obs. 205171685
Ligustrum vulgare, photographed by Andrey Polstianoi
fig. b Andrey Polstianoi, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205723849
Ligustrum vulgare, photographed by Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas
fig. c Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204580477
Ligustrum vulgare, photographed by Yann Kemper
fig. d Yann Kemper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 203949476
Ligustrum vulgare, photographed by Yann Kemper
fig. e Yann Kemper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 202651004
Ligustrum vulgare, photographed by Pavel Kacl
fig. f Pavel Kacl, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203127725
Ligustrum vulgare, photographed by Yann Kemper
fig. g Yann Kemper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 202507679
Ligustrum vulgare, photographed by Zoltán Stekkelpak
fig. h Zoltán Stekkelpak, CC0 1.0 / obs. 201625552

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 = 1,311 observations

Peak flowering in Jun, from 1,311 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 63 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 album Gueldenst.
  • Ligustrum album Gueldenst. ex Ledeb.
  • Ligustrum angustifolium Gilib.
  • Ligustrum decipiens Gand.
  • Ligustrum insulare Decne.
  • Ligustrum insulense Decne.
  • Ligustrum italicum Mill.
  • Ligustrum lodense Glogau
  • Ligustrum oviforme Gand.
  • Ligustrum sempervirens (Gray) Lindl.
  • Ligustrum sempervirens Mazziari
  • Ligustrum vicinum Gand.
  • Ligustrum vulgare f. argenteovariegatum (Weston) Rehder
  • Ligustrum vulgare f. aureovariegatum (Weston) Schelle
  • Ligustrum vulgare f. aureum (H.Jaeger) Dippel
  • Ligustrum vulgare f. auriflorum (Hoefker) Rehder
  • Ligustrum vulgare f. buxifolium (G.Nicholson) Rehder
  • Ligustrum vulgare f. chlorocarpum (Loudon) Schelle
  • Ligustrum vulgare f. densiflorum (C.K.Schneid.) Rehder
  • Ligustrum vulgare f. flaviflorum Murr ex Hegi
  • Ligustrum vulgare f. glaucum (Mouill.) Rehder
  • Ligustrum vulgare f. leucocarpum (Loudon) Schelle
  • Ligustrum vulgare f. lodense (Glogau) Rehder
  • Ligustrum vulgare f. microphyllum Murr ex Hegi

and 39 more.

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.