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Cotoneaster ambiguus; photograph Jens Kristiansen, CC BY-SA, via GBIF CC BY-SAJens Kristiansen, CC BY-SA, via GBIF

Cotoneaster ambiguus Rehder & E.H.Wilson

Ambiguous Cotoneaster

Rosaceae · China South-Central, Inner Mongolia +1

No habitat climate
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Cotoneaster ambiguus, photograph Jens Kristiansen, CC BY-SA, via GBIFCotoneaster ambiguus, photograph Jens Kristiansen, CC BY-SA, via GBIFCotoneaster ambiguus, photograph Jens Kristiansen, CC BY-SA, via GBIFCotoneaster ambiguus, photograph Jens Kristiansen, CC BY-SA, via GBIFCotoneaster ambiguus, photograph Jens Kristiansen, CC BY-SA, via GBIFCotoneaster ambiguus, photograph Jens Kristiansen, CC BY-SA, via GBIF 24 photographs ›

Summary

Cotoneaster ambiguus, the dubious cotoneaster, is a flowering plant species in the Rosaceae family, native to central China and Inner Mongolia, and introduced to Belgium and Norway. A shrub of dense forests, it is morphologically intermediate between Cotoneaster moupinensis and C. acutifolius. It is available occasionally from commercial suppliers.

Quoted from Wikipedia, "Cotoneaster ambiguus", CC BY-SA 4.0.

About the genus · Cotoneaster

Cotoneaster is a genus of flowering plants in the rose family, Rosaceae, native to the Palaearctic region, with a strong concentration of diversity in the genus in the mountains of southwestern China and the Himalayas. They are related to hawthorns (Crataegus), firethorns (Pyracantha), photinias (Photinia), and rowans (Sorbus).

Quoted from Wikipedia, "Cotoneaster", CC BY-SA 4.0.

Cultivation

Nothing derived: no habitat climate for this species.

Climate across the habitat

No habitat climate can be derived: 123 in-range records, none placed to within 10 km. 123 of the 123 in-range records are placed to worse than 10 km, or to no stated accuracy and fewer than three decimals or by something other than a person's observation, and cannot place a climate cell, though they count for the map and its marker.

Natural habitat

Native range as published by WCVP; the marker is where the records are densest and decides nothing.
Openly licensed records inside the range, framed on where they fall.
NativeChina South-Central, Inner Mongolia, China North-Central · introduced: Great Britain, Norway, Belgium, Germany · regions are the level-3 units of the World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions, as Kew's World Checklist records ranges, some under historical names such as Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia (how).
Map marker34.058, 107.922 · in the densest population, 99 records (80% of those in range)
Kew's description“shrub” · “temperate” · quoted from WCVP, RBG Kew (CC BY 4.0); not derived here
Evidence usedThe map marker rests on all 123 georeferenced records inside the native range; the map shows only the 45 openly licensed ones, which alone would put the marker 20 km away. 518 records outside the WCVP native range not used. No climate across the range is derived for this species. 123 in-range records are placed to worse than 10 km, or with no stated accuracy (admitted only as a person's observation to three decimals), and stay on the map but off the climate.
How this section is made
The map marker: the openly licensed record nearest the middle of the densest 1° population inside the densest 4° block of the 123 in-range records; it decides nothing. Records outside the native range, living specimens and records marked introduced are not used; which records count.

Photographs

Cotoneaster ambiguus, photograph 1did not loadCotoneaster ambiguus, photograph 2did not loadCotoneaster ambiguus, photograph 3did not loadCotoneaster ambiguus, photograph 4did not loadCotoneaster ambiguus, photograph 5did not loadCotoneaster ambiguus, photograph 6did not load

Photographs: Jens Kristiansen, CC BY-SA, via GBIF (6).

Other Cotoneaster 101 in the reference

Cotoneaster acuminatus Cotoneaster acuminatus Acuminate cotoneaster Photo: CC BY, Sagnik Dutta RoyCotoneaster acutifolius Cotoneaster acutifolius Peking cotoneaster Photo: CC BY, Jane CharlenCotoneaster adpressus Cotoneaster adpressus Creeping cotoneaster Photo: CC BY, Remi Aleksander NielsenCotoneaster affinis Cotoneaster affinis Purpleberry cotoneaster Photo: CC BY, jamie-aaCotoneaster alaunicus Cotoneaster alaunicus Rosaceae Photo: CC BY, Fyodor PudovikovCotoneaster apiculatus Cotoneaster apiculatus Cranberry cotoneaster Photo: CC BY, Jacy ChenCotoneaster armenus Cotoneaster armenus Rosaceae Photo: CC BY-SA, Krzysztof Ziarnek, KenraizCotoneaster ascendens Cotoneaster ascendens Ascending Cotoneaster Photo: CC0, author not stated Cotoneaster beimashanensis Rosaceae Cotoneaster bradyi Brady's Cotoneaster Cotoneaster bullatus Cotoneaster bullatus Hollyberry cotoneaster Photo: CC BY, Rosy Thomson Cotoneaster bumthangensis Rosaceae all 102 ›

Names & registers

Also known as Cotoneaster acutifolius var. ambiguus; Cotoneaster acutifolius var. villosulus; Cotoneaster dissimilis; Cotoneaster hsingshangensis; Cotoneaster laetevirens and 7 more. (GBIF Backbone)

Kew accepts as species of their own Cotoneaster villosulus: older names in GBIF's record of this species that Kew's World Checklist accepts as other species. (WCVP, RBG Kew, file of 2026-06-04)

GBIFPOWOIPNIWFOWikidataWikipediaiNaturalist

The record

Family
Rosaceae
Described by
Rehder & E.H.Wilson
Native to
China South-Central, Inner Mongolia, China North-Central
Wild records
123 in range · 45 open

Every figure here is derived from public data by a stated rule and names its source; nothing about this species is written for its page by a person or by AI, apart from the marked, credited quotations. How →

Where this page came from built 2026-10-21
GBIF species record gbif.species answeredasked 2026-10-21
GBIF synonyms gbif.synonyms answeredasked 2026-10-21
GBIF common names gbif.vernacular answeredasked 2026-10-21names fetched 2026-10-21
WCVP native range wcvp.distribution answeredas of 2026-06-04
GBIF occurrence records gbif.occurrences answeredas of 2026-10-21GBIF occurrence download https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.hbdw64, of 2026-10-21; 46 records within 1 km of a botanic garden, herbarium or zoo left out (42 at a botanic garden or arboretum, 1 at a herbarium, 3 at a zoo; Wikidata's list)
Habitat climate climate nothing to reportasked 2026-10-21123 in-range records, none placed to within 10 km
Wikidata wikidata answeredasked 2026-10-21
Wikipedia wikipedia answeredasked 2026-10-21
iNaturalist photographs, wild inat.photos.wild nothing to reportasked 2026-10-22from iNaturalist's open data of 2026-09-27: research-grade observations with an open-licence photograph, the 24 whose photographs iNaturalist received last (the open data holds no votes); filled 2026-10-22
iNaturalist photographs, cultivated inat.photos.cultivated not asked
GBIF media gbif.media answeredasked 2026-10-21
OpenAlex papers openalex not askednot yet asked for this reference; a later fill takes the papers from OpenAlex's snapshot

Every source is recorded as having answered, reported nothing, refused, failed, not been asked, or answered twice where one answer is taken (“not taken: two items answered”), and, for a source asked when this page was built, when: the figures are as the source held them that day; a source read from a file (Kew's World Checklist, a GBIF download) says "as of" the file's day instead; a row carried from an earlier build of the page names that build instead. Only “nothing to report” is ever shown as an absence. Records came from 50 datasets via GBIF.org; each carries its own licence.

Cultifolio

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