Xanthoceras sorbifolium; photograph (c) Jane Charlen, some rights reserved (CC BY)

CC BY(c) Jane Charlen, some rights reserved (CC BY) · observed growing wild · 2025-04-20

Xanthoceras sorbifolium Bunge

Poaceae · Inner Mongolia, China North-Central +2

Cited as Kew's World Checklist cites it, Xanthoceras sorbifolium Bunge: GBIF's backbone key for this page carries the name with another author, (A.Braun) Holub.

No habitat climate

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Summary

Xanthoceras sorbifolium, the yellowhorn, shiny leaf yellowhorn, goldenhorn, or Chinese flowering chestnut, is a woody oil tree species in the family Sapindaceae, and the only species in the genus Xanthoceras. It is native to northern China in the provinces of Gansu, Hebei, Henan, Liaoning, Nei Monggol, Ningxia, Shaanxi, and Shandong. It is also cultivated in Russia, having been imported there since the 19th Century. The genus name Xanthoceras (which translates as "yellow horn") is considered to be the most basal member of the family Sapindaceae. More on Wikipedia ›

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

Cultivation

Nothing derived: no habitat climate for this species.

Climate across the habitat

No habitat climate can be derived: 3 in-range records, none placed to within 10 km. 3 of the 3 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.

Openly licensed records inside the range, framed on where they fall.

NativeInner Mongolia, China North-Central, China Southeast, Korea · introduced: Uzbekistan · 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).

Kew's description“shrub or tree” · “temperate” · quoted from WCVP, RBG Kew (CC BY 4.0); not derived here

Evidence usedThe map marker rests on all 3 georeferenced records inside the native range; the map shows only the 2 openly licensed ones, which alone would put the marker 296 km away. Under a dozen records behind the map. No climate across the range is derived for this species. 3 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.

Photographs

Photographs: (c) Jane Charlen, some rights reserved (CC BY) (6).

Names & registers

GBIF POWO IPNI WFO Wikidata Wikipedia iNaturalist

The record

Family

Poaceae

Described by

Bunge

Native to

Inner Mongolia, China North-Central, China Southeast +1

Wild records

3 in range · 2 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 2026-10-22

GBIF species record gbif.species answeredasked 2026-10-22homonym key checked: GBIF holds no one usage of Xanthoceras sorbifolium Bunge under another key, so the key is left as it is; GBIF's key 9479204 is Xanthoceras sorbifolium (A.Braun) Holub; the page links Kew's Xanthoceras sorbifolium Bunge, and the name is cited as Kew cites it

GBIF synonyms gbif.synonyms answeredasked 2026-10-22

GBIF common names gbif.vernacular answeredasked 2026-10-22names fetched 2026-10-22

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

Habitat climate climate nothing to reportasked 2026-10-223 in-range records, none placed to within 10 km

Wikidata wikidata answeredasked 2026-10-22found by its label; its IPNI identifier 785606-1 is Kew's for Xanthoceras sorbifolium Bunge

Wikipedia wikipedia answeredasked 2026-10-22Wikipedia redirects Xanthoceras sorbifolium to Xanthoceras, this species' genus (Q13418151), which holds one accepted species in Kew's WCVP

iNaturalist photographs, wild inat.photos.wild answeredasked 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 nothing to reportasked 2026-10-22

Wikimedia Commons commons answeredasked 2026-10-22

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 3 datasets via GBIF.org; each carries its own licence.