Japan and temperate East Asia, Singapore and tropical Asia
Season
summer, autumn
Shape
cluster
IUCN status
Least Concern
Identification
An evergreen shrub or small tree 2–6 m tall with erect stems splaying outward as they mature; first-year stems have a glaucous bloom, mature ones grey bark. Leaves in pairs or whorls of three, thick, leathery, dark green, narrow-lanceolate, 5–21 cm long with entire margins, light green and glossy when young. Flowers clustered at the branch tips, 2.5–3 cm across, pink in wild plants with a deeply five-lobed fringed corolla; garden forms white to dark red, larger (5 cm) and double. Named in Chinese for bamboo-like stems and peach-like flowers. The whole plant is highly poisonous.
Habitat
Roadsides, motorway medians, gardens, coasts and river valleys, tolerant of drought, flooding and pollution; one of the commonest landscaping shrubs.
Distribution
Native from the Mediterranean east to southern Asia (Morocco and Portugal to India and Myanmar), with the Flora of China also citing Yunnan; widely planted in temperate and subtropical regions as an ornamental. Very common in cities across China, from Honshu south in Japan and in Singapore.
Season and behaviour
June to October, peaking in high summer and almost all year in the tropics; it flowers in full sun and is the main colour of summer streets.
Photography tips
These are the FilmAnalysis editors' notes, not content from the sources.
Pink flowers against long narrow dark leaves are a ready composition: soft light for a whole cluster, macro for the fringe on the corolla edge; noon light is too hard and bleaches the flowers. Rows along a highway compress with a long lens into one band of pink. Wash your hands afterwards and never break branches: every part is poisonous, and so is the smoke of burning it.
Photographic styles
Pink on a midsummer roadside; narrow leaves against flower clusters.
Similar species
Yellow oleander (yellow funnel flowers, another genus); frangipani (waxy flowers, big leaves); peach blossom (spring, deciduous).
Related badge
None yet. No validated photo recognition exists for this species, so no badge is tied to it: a name in the encyclopedia is not evidence in a photograph.
The illustration is original FilmAnalysis artwork. No photographs yet: only photos cleared for commercial use with credit will be added.
Why it is listed: this species comes from the Flower checklist (GBIF backbone and Wikidata verified). Names follow the GBIF backbone and Wikidata; the facts follow the sources below; photo recognition is not offered.
