Home / Browse / Casearia / Smooth Honeytree

iNaturalist — CC, credited & licensed per image

Flacourtiaceae family

Smooth Honeytree Casearia nitida

Smooth Honeytree is an introduced perennial tree, found in the lower 48 states.

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY

Conditions

Sources · Conditions

Cold hardiness (derived) — Hardiness

Hardiness: ≥ zone 11 derived from its U.S. range

Size & form

Sources · Size & form

USDA PLANTS — Lifespan

TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0) — Foliage

Lifespan: Perennial
Foliage: Deciduous broadleaf

In the garden

Tree layer (canopy / understory) — Sits in the tree of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →

derived roles

Species characteristics from USDA PLANTS (public domain) + TRY (CC BY) — general guidance, not a guarantee for your exact site. Deer "browsing" is documented palatability, not a deer-proof claim.

Wildlife & pollinators

How pollinator value is scored →

❧ Caterpillar hosts Documented caterpillar host

Recorded feeding on Casearia in North America, including:

Doxocopa laure · Silver Emperor

Named species (a documented Nearctic sample, not exhaustive) from NHM HOSTS (CC0).

Species thumbnails re-hosted from iNaturalist — Creative Commons, credited per image (hover for credit). Click any species to see it on iNaturalist. Not exhaustive; many taxa have no openly-licensed photo yet.

How we know this (1) Methods & honest limits

Leaf build Direct fact

We read each species’ measured specific leaf area (leaf area per unit dry weight) from the Global Spectrum dataset and band it: thin & fast (high SLA), medium, or thick & tough (low SLA). The global median is about 10 mm²/mg.

Honest limits: A species-mean from pooled measurements — individual plants vary with light and site. A broad strategy signal, not a precise per-plant figure.

Díaz, S. et al. (2022) The global spectrum of plant form and function: enhanced species-level trait dataset. Scientific Data 9:755.

Derived values are computed from open data by a published method — labelled, cited, and never shown as a direct observation. Full methodology →

Sources for this entry (12) Open & cited

[01] Scientific name & family — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)

[02] Growth habit & duration — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)

[03] Native status & distribution — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)

[04] Common name — USDA PLANTS (via GBIF)

[05] Invasive / introduced status — US-RIIS v2.0 (USGS)

[06] Photos — iNaturalist — CC, credited per image

[07] Ecological value — GloBI

[08] Foliage — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)

[09] Functional traits — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)

[10] Cold hardiness (derived) — Derived from U.S. range × USDA PHZM zones

[11] Caterpillar species — NHM HOSTS (CC0)

[12] County range — GBIF Open Data — open-licensed occurrences (CC0/CC-BY) → county

Spot an error or have a better photo? Every field links to its source, and the whole dataset is open.

Cite this page Open data, please attribute

PlantKey’s data is open under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to reuse and adapt, with attribution and the same licence. Photos keep their own per-image licence + credit (see Sources above).

Citation

Loading…

BibTeX

Loading…

Enable JavaScript for a ready-to-copy citation with today’s access date, or cite this page’s URL with the date you viewed it.

Ecological value open data

3 / 5 Keystone

Keystone (host) value — caterpillar, specialist-bee & monarch hosting. A low number means “not a keystone host,” not “low value”: generalist flower-visitor value is shown separately below.

Caterpillar host 3

⚠ non-native — reduced keystone value

Deep dive

Caterpillar host · 3/5 — native butterfly & moth caterpillars that feed on this genus — the base of the food web (more caterpillars → more songbirds). Genus-level keystone count from Warren II 2026 (CC0; Tallamy host-use records), gap-filled by our GloBI derivation.

Counts are genus-level and banded 0–5. Full rubric →

Host / keystone value from open interaction data. How this is scored →

📍 In your area live

Introduced to the U.S.

Recorded in 1 state.

Open occurrence records place it in 1 counties across 1 states · GBIF (CC0/CC-BY)

Introduced — Conterminous United States

Recorded in 1 states/territories

Conservation

Invasive? Introduced

Toxicity & pet safety

Check the ASPCA pet database →

Educational, not veterinary advice. If you suspect your pet ate this plant, contact a vet or pet poison-control line.

Functional traits TRY · Dryad

Leaf nitrogen average

20.9 mg/g

leaf nitrogen — a rough guide to compost/mulch value

Leaf build medium

Medium

mid-range leaf build (measured leaf area per weight 15.9 mm²/mg)

Deep dive — what these mean

Leaf nitrogen 20.9 mg/g — measured leaf N. Higher = richer prunings for compost/mulch (a measured stand-in for "dynamic accumulator" claims).

Leaf build — how thick & tough the leaves are. Thin, lightweight leaves grow fast and crave light; thick, tough leaves last longer and shrug off shade, drought & grazing. (measured leaf area per dry weight, 15.9 mm²/mg)

Measured traits from TRY + Werner et al. (N-fix), Fan et al. (roots) & FungalRoot — general guidance, not species-specific prescriptions.

More modules coming

Smooth Honeytree Casearia nitida

Growing & care

Wildlife & pollinators

Related plants