Species
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Euonymus alatus (Thunb.) Siebold

Burning Bush, Burning Bush Spindletree, Burningbush, Flügel-Spindelstrauch (DE)

Climate known 69 photographs
Add one to my plants Sow seed

Every figure on this page is derived from public data by a stated rule and says its source; nothing here is written by a person or a model, except the Wikipedia passage, which is quoted and marked as such. How it is made.

Summary

Euonymus alatus, known variously as burning bush, winged euonymus, winged spindle, and winged spindle-tree, is a species of flowering plant in the family Celastraceae, native to central and northern China, Japan, and Korea.

Text from Wikipedia, “Euonymus alatus”, CC BY-SA 4.0, quoted as written. Kept separate from everything derived here.

About the genus · Euonymus

Euonymus is a genus of flowering plants in the staff vine family Celastraceae. Common names vary widely among different species and between different English-speaking countries, but include spindle, burning-bush, strawberry-bush, wahoo, wintercreeper, or simply euonymus. It has about 140 species of deciduous and evergreen shrubs, small trees and lianas. More on Wikipedia ›

The opening of Wikipedia, “Euonymus”, CC BY-SA 4.0, quoted as written.

Family
Celastraceae
Described by
(Thunb.) Siebold
Native to
Buryatiya, Chita, Irkutsk +12
Wild records
435 in range· 233 open

At a glance

Warmest month
27°C
Aug, mean day; nights 21 °C (CHELSA)
Rain
1350mm/yr
12 wet months · peak Jul 246 mm (CHELSA)
Light
15–36DLI
mol/m²/day, winter to summer, open sky (CHELSA shortwave)
In short condensed by rule from the cultivation cards · not written by a person
Rain rule: a summer growing season, April to September in the northern hemisphere (April to September at the habitat, northern). Habitat rain 1350 mm a year, wettest July at 246 mm, driest December at 31 mm (habitat calendar, northern hemisphere). Open sky over the habitat: 15 to 36 mol/m²/day. Cold floor -9.8 °C (1st-percentile habitat night, NASA POWER).
Each sentence is one card's own one-line form, written by the same rule as the card (Its year, Rain, Light, Temperature); the note cannot say what a card does not. Months are given for the northern hemisphere (set your site in Settings to change this), and the habitat's own alongside. The cards · the figures.

Also known as Celastrus alatus Thunb.; Euonymus alatus Rupr.; Euonymus alatus f. apterus Regel; Euonymus alatus f. compactus Rehder; Euonymus alatus f. microphyllus (Nakai) H.Hara and 40 more.

Cultivation

Its year Rain rule: a summer growing season, April to September in the northern hemisphere (April to September at the habitat, northern).

This species’ habitat figures, and what two fixed rules read from them.

The rain rule reads a summer growing season: 70% of the year's rain (1021 mm of 1350 mm) falls in April to September, warmer than the year (wet-season mean 19.5 °C against a yearly mean of 12.1 °C). Months are the habitat's, northern hemisphere; shifted six months for a southern-hemisphere collection: October to March.

Read from the median year of CHELSA monthly rainfall and mean temperature across the envelope cells: the rain rule takes the smallest set of months carrying 70% of the rain and calls it winter when its mean is more than half a degree below the year's, summer when more than that above, and neither in between; the temperature rule, used only under 120 mm, names the cooler six months when they are at least a degree cooler than the other six. Months are shifted for the other hemisphere only where the temperature curve gives a season to reverse. A reading of the curves, not an observation of the plant.

Rain Habitat rain 1350 mm a year, wettest July at 246 mm, driest December at 31 mm (habitat calendar, northern hemisphere).

This species’ habitat figures, with their source.

1350 mm a year at the habitat, 1021 mm of it April to September. Wettest month July at 246 mm, driest December at 31 mm. Across the envelope cells the year's total runs 721 mm to 2592 mm (10th to 90th percentile of each cell's own year) (median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA; habitat calendar, northern hemisphere).

CHELSA monthly precipitation, median year across the envelope cells. The rain that falls where the species is recorded; nothing about how the plant takes water.

Light Open sky over the habitat: 15 to 36 mol/m²/day.

This species’ habitat figures, with their source.

Open sky over the habitat: 15 to 36 mol/m²/day across the year (daily light integral, median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA; the lowest 10th-percentile month across the cells is 12, the highest 90th-percentile month 37).

CHELSA shortwave radiation at each envelope cell, a daily-mean flux taken to a daily total and converted at 2.07 mol of PAR per MJ. The sky over the habitat, measured; what reaches a plant under a rock, a shrub or a shade cloth is not.

Warmth and air Cold floor -9.8 °C (1st-percentile habitat night, NASA POWER).

This species’ habitat figures, with their source.

Temperature

Coldest: the 1st-percentile night over 44 years at the typical cell is -9.8 °C, the absolute minimum -16.4 °C, about 71 frost nights a year (NASA POWER daily minima). Warmest: the 99th-percentile day is 29.2 °C. Monthly means: coldest night -6.0 °C in January (across the envelope cells -14.6 °C to 1.5 °C), warmest day 27.1 °C in August (median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA). Cold floor: -9.8 °C, which is the 1st-percentile night over 44 years at the typical cell (NASA POWER).

NASA POWER daily minima and maxima 1981–2024 at the typical cell, lapse-corrected to its elevation; CHELSA monthly means, median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA. The cold floor is the figure named in its sentence. Not a measured survival limit for any plant in a pot.

Humidity

Relative humidity at the habitat: 57 to 67% across the year (monthly means, median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA). A figure about the air, saying nothing about how the plant takes water.

CHELSA relative humidity, median year across the envelope cells.

The figures the cards read from are in Climate below, and where they came from in Natural habitat.

Climate across the habitat

Habitat climate through the yearMean day from 2 °C in Jan to 27 °C in Aug; mean night from -6 °C in Jan to 21 °C in Aug. The cold quarter, Dec to Feb, is the three months around the coldest night. 1350 mm of rain a year, most in Jul. The bands show the 10th to 90th percentile across 390 habitat cells. Over 44 years at the typical cell the absolute minimum was -16.4 °C and the 99th-percentile day 29.2 °C; neither is dated to a month. Beneath: daily light integral and relative humidity through the year, each on its own scale.-20°-10°10°20°30°40°frost29.2° 99th-percentile day (undated)-16.4° lowest night in 44 yrs (undated)°C · day and nightcold quarter0100200300400500mm rainDLI 15–36RH 57–67 %JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
day night rain 10th–90th percentile across 390 habitat cells cold quarter: the three months around the coldest night extremes over 44 years at the typical cell, marked at the edge: undated DLI, mol/m²/dayRH %each on its own scale
Figures by month
JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
Day °C2 / -6–84 / -3–109 / 3–1416 / 10–2020 / 16–2424 / 19–2726 / 23–2927 / 24–3023 / 19–2618 / 13–2111 / 4–155 / -3–10
Night °C-6 / -15–2-4 / -12–2-0 / -7–56 / 1–1111 / 7–1516 / 12–1920 / 16–2321 / 16–2416 / 11–209 / 4–153 / -4–9-3 / -11–4
Rain mm38 / 8–15046 / 11–14071 / 24–18493 / 40–183121 / 67–213165 / 86–283246 / 137–403218 / 124–349178 / 84–29484 / 43–20559 / 23–18731 / 9–172
DLI17 / 14–1922 / 18–2428 / 24–3034 / 30–3636 / 32–3734 / 29–3631 / 27–3430 / 28–3326 / 23–2822 / 18–2517 / 14–1915 / 12–17
RH %58 / 54–6657 / 54–6557 / 53–6258 / 53–6160 / 56–6363 / 58–6867 / 62–7165 / 62–6963 / 60–6759 / 57–6459 / 55–6458 / 54–65

Each figure is the median across the 390 grid cells holding the 413 in-range records, with the 10th–90th percentile span across those cells after the slash where it differs. Extremes and elevation were read at the typical cell 1061:6185 (36.925, 129.275). Over 44 years there: absolute minimum -16.4 °C, 1st-percentile night -9.8 °C, 99th-percentile day 29.2 °C. Normals: CHELSA V2.1 1981–2010 climatology, 0.05° cells (each the mean of ~36 1 km pixels). Envelope: median and 10th–90th percentile of each month across the 390 distinct grid cells holding the 413 in-range records; extremes and elevation at the typical cell 1061:6185 (its coldest month's mean night nearest the median across cells); its position is the cell centre. Extremes: NASA POWER (MERRA-2) daily 1981–2024, cell 37.00_129.375, lapse-corrected +211 m at 6.5 °C/km. Elevation: ETOPO 2022, 390 m (cell mean).

Natural habitat

Native range as published by WCVP; the marker is where the records are densest and decides nothing: the climate was read across every in-range record's cell, not at the marker.
Openly licensed records inside the range, framed on where they fall.
NativeBuryatiya, Chita, Irkutsk, Amur, Khabarovsk, Kuril Is., Primorye, Sakhalin, China South-Central, Inner Mongolia, Manchuria, China North-Central, China Southeast, Japan, Korea· introduced: Germany, Uzbekistan, Ontario, Montana, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Wisconsin, Connecticut, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode I., Vermont, West Virginia, Utah, Arkansas, Delaware, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, District of Columbia
Kew's description“shrub” · “temperate”· quoted from WCVP, RBG Kew (CC BY 4.0); not derived here
Map marker37.792, 126.767 · in the densest population, 197 records (45% of those in range)
Evidence usedThe map marker and the climate envelope rest on all 435 georeferenced records inside the native range; the map shows only the 233 openly licensed ones, which alone would put the marker 988 km away. 1484 records outside the range (gardens, roadsides, misidentifications) ignored. 22 in-range records are placed to worse than 10 km and stay on the map but off the climate.
The map markerthe map marker: the openly licensed record nearest the middle of the densest 1° population inside the densest 4° block of the 435 in-range records; it decides nothing.

Photographs

Euonymus alatusEuonymus alatusEuonymus alatusEuonymus alatusEuonymus alatusEuonymus alatusEuonymus alatusEuonymus alatus

Photographs: (c) Emily Summerbell, some rights reserved (CC BY) (3); no rights reserved · CC0 (2); (c) Tom Pollard, some rights reserved (CC BY) (3).

Photographs: iNaturalist did not answer when this page was built; what is shown came from the sources that did.

Papers naming this species

Works whose title or abstract names Euonymus alatus, most cited first, from OpenAlex (CC0). A mention, not a cultivation source: nothing on this page is drawn from them.

Comparative deep transcriptional profiling of four developing oilseeds
Manuel Adrián Troncoso-Ponce, Aruna Kilaru, Xia Cao, Timothy P. Durrett (2011) · The Plant Journal
Molecular tools enabling pennycress (Thlaspi arvense) as a model plant and oilseed cash cover crop
Michaela McGinn, Winthrop B. Phippen, Ratan Chopra, Sunil Bansal (2018) · Plant Biotechnology Journal
A distinct DGAT with sn -3 acetyltransferase activity that synthesizes unusual, reduced-viscosity oils in Euonymus and transgenic seeds
Timothy P. Durrett, Daniel D. McClosky, Ajay W. Tumaney, Dezi Elzinga (2010) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Multivariate forecasts of potential distributions of invasive plant species
Inés Ibáñez, John A. Silander, Adam M. Wilson, Nancy LaFleur (2009) · Ecological Applications
Euonymus alatus prevents the hyperglycemia and hyperlipidemia induced by high-fat diet in ICR mice
Sang Hyun Park, Sung Kwon Ko, Sung Hyun Chung (2005) · Journal of Ethnopharmacology

Similar habitat climate the 6 species whose habitat climate is nearest this one's: mean day and night, month by month, and rain on a log scale, in calendar order, so a habitat with the same seasons six months out is far, not near. Nothing else counts: not range, not family.

Other Euonymus 4 in the reference

History & registers

Where this page came from built 2026-09-20 · dossier v2 · node
gbif.species answeredcarried from build of 2026-09-19 (offline re-derivation; the backbone was not asked)
gbif.synonyms answeredcarried from build of 2026-09-19 (offline re-derivation; the backbone was not asked)
gbif.vernacular answeredcarried from build of 2026-09-19 (offline re-derivation; the backbone was not asked)
wcvp.distribution answered
gbif.occurrences answeredGBIF occurrence download https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.3h4zam
climate answered
wikidata answeredcarried from build of 2026-09-19 (rederive); that build: carried from build of 2026-09-19 (rederive)
wikipedia answeredcarried from build of 2026-09-19; this build: skipped
inat.taxon not asked
inat.photos.wild answeredcarried from build of 2026-09-19; this build: skipped
inat.photos.cultivated nothing to reportcarried from build of 2026-09-19 (rederive); that build: carried from build of 2026-09-19 (rederive)
commons nothing to reportcarried from build of 2026-09-19 (rederive); that build: carried from build of 2026-09-19 (rederive)
gbif.media answered
openalex answeredcarried from build of 2026-09-19; this build: skipped

Every upstream is recorded as having answered, reported nothing, or refused. Only “nothing to report” is ever shown as an absence. Records came from 105 datasets via GBIF.org; each carries its own licence.