Prunus laurocerasusL.

Cherry laurel

WFO wfo-0001016516 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Prunus laurocerasus, photographed by Daniel Cahen
fig. a Daniel Cahen, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-12 / obs. 205533592
Prunus laurocerasus, photographed by Julien Lepage
fig. b Julien Lepage, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199632920
Prunus laurocerasus, photographed by Jens-Christian Svenning
fig. c Jens-Christian Svenning, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202939057
Prunus laurocerasus, photographed by Daniel Cahen
fig. d Daniel Cahen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202821467
Prunus laurocerasus, photographed by B. Phalan
fig. e B. Phalan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203226390
Prunus laurocerasus, photographed by Юрий Данилевский (Yuriy Danilevsky)
fig. f Юрий Данилевский (Yuriy Danilevsky), CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204700359
Prunus laurocerasus, photographed by Jens-Christian Svenning
fig. g Jens-Christian Svenning, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202809124
Prunus laurocerasus, photographed by Norrland
fig. h Norrland, CC0 1.0 / obs. 199719577

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 = 1,221 observations

Peak flowering in Apr, from 1,221 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 95 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.

  • Cerasus laurocerasus (L.) Loisel.
  • Cerasus laurocerasus (L.) Dum.Cours.
  • Cerasus laurocerasus f. angustifolia (Loudon) Anon.
  • Cerasus laurocerasus subvar. rotundifolia Anon.
  • Cerasus laurocerasus unranked capensis K.Koch
  • Cerasus laurocerasus unranked colchica K.Koch
  • Cerasus laurocerasus unranked parvifolia Anon.
  • Cerasus laurocerasus unranked variegata K.Koch
  • Cerasus laurocerasus var. angustifolia Loudon
  • Cerasus laurocerasus var. camtschatica Lavallée
  • Cerasus laurocerasus var. caucasica G.Kirchn.
  • Cerasus laurocerasus var. colchica Anon.
  • Cerasus laurocerasus var. erecta Lavallée
  • Cerasus laurocerasus var. intermedia Lavallée
  • Cerasus laurocerasus var. latifolia Lavallée
  • Cerasus laurocerasus var. laurifolius Albov
  • Cerasus laurocerasus var. longifolia Lavallée
  • Cerasus laurocerasus var. microphylla Lavallée
  • Cerasus laurocerasus var. myrtifolia Lavallée
  • Cerasus laurocerasus var. otini Lavallée
  • Cerasus laurocerasus var. pumilio Lindl.
  • Cerasus laurocerasus var. rotundifolia Lavallée
  • Lauro-cerasus macrophylla Briot
  • Lauro-cerasus officinalis M.Roem.

and 71 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.